Learned irrelevance and retrospective correlation learning.

Journal article

In 1973 Mackintosh reported an interference effect that he called learned irrelevance in which exposure to uncorrelated (CS/US) presentation of the unconditional stimulus (US) and the conditioned stimulus (CS) interfered with future Pavlovian conditioning. It has been argued that there is no specific interference effect in learned irrelevance; rather the interference is the sum of independent CS and US exposure effects (CS + US). We review previous research on this question and report two new experiments. We conclude that learned irrelevance is a consequence of a contingency learning and a specific learned irrelevance mechanism. Moreover even the independent exposure controls, used in previous experiments to support the CS and US exposure account, provide support for the correlation learning process.

Authors: Baker, A; Murphy, R; Mehta, R

• Journal: Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. B, Comparative and physiological psychology
• Volume: 56
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 90-101
• Publication date: 2003-02-01
• DOI: 10.1080/02724990244000197
• EISSN: 1464-1321
• ISSN: 0272-4995
• Language: English
• Keywords: Rats; Behavior, Animal; Rats, Wistar; Association Learning; Conditioning, Classical; Animals