Abstract
The contribution of attention to learning was examined in delay, trace, discrimination, and discrimination reversal eyeblink conditioning in young healthy adults. Participants performed either single- or two-cued conditioning paradigms with three levels of distraction: no distraction (full attention), concurrently watching a silent movie, or concurrent verbal shadowing. Conditioning for single-cue delay and trace conditioning paradigms was unaffected by the level of distraction. Conditioning for the two-cue paradigms of discrimination and discrimination reversal was reduced greatly when attention was divided. Silent movie watching allowed for some acquisition (CRs to the CS+) but no discrimination (differential responses to CS+ vs. CS−). Verbal shadowing eliminated both acquisition and discrimination. These results indicate that, in the human, attention makes a critical contribution to the successful acquisition of two-cue eyeblink conditioning tasks that require discrimination and discrimination reversal.
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This research was supported by Grant F31 GM 17223 to M.C.C. and by Grants NINDS 1P50NS26985, NIH R01 AG08796, and NIH MH 47340 to J.F.D.
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Carrillo, M.C., Gabrieli, J.D.E. & Disterhoft, J.F. Selective effects of division of attention on discrimination conditioning. Psychobiology 28, 293–302 (2000). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03331988
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03331988