Two experiments are described that investigate the effects of attention in moderating evaluative conditioning (EC) effects in a picture‐picture paradigm in which previously discovered experimental artifacts (e.g., Field & Davey, 1999 Field, AP, and Davey, GCL, (1999). Reevaluating evaluative conditioning: A nonassociative explanation of conditioning effects in the visual evaluative conditioning paradigm, Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes 25 ((1999)), pp. 211–224.[Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®], [Google Scholar]) were overcome by counterbalancing conditioned stimuli (CSs) and unconditioned stimuli (USs) (...) across participants. Conditioned responses for individuals who had attention enhanced were compared against a control group and groups for whom attention was impeded using a distracter task. In a second experiment the effects of attention were dissociated from those of contingency awareness by using backward‐masked US presentations. The results of these experiments indicate that although associative EC effects may not be disrupted by a lack of contingency awareness, attention is an important factor in establishing conditioning. These results shed some light onto the possible boundary conditions that could explain past inconsistencies in obtaining EC effects in the visual paradigm. (shrink)

ABSTRACTTwo high-powered experiments examined the role of evaluative response production in the extinction of evaluative conditioning by positioning EC in the procedural and conceptual framewo...

Volume 34, Issue 8, December 2020, Page 1690-1703.

Evaluative conditioning (EC) effects refer to changes in the liking of a neutral (conditioned) stimulus (CS) due to pairing with an affective (unconditioned) stimulus (US). Some research found that EC effects are resistant to presentations of the CS without the US, whereas other studies found evidence for extinction effects. A recent study found extinction of EC only when participants rated the CS before and after the CS-only presentations, but not when CS evaluation was measured once or indirectly with the evaluative (...) priming task. In two experiments (total N = 2,181), we found no evidence that indirectly measured evaluation is sensitive to extinction, using an indirect evaluation measure with high sensitivity – the Implicit Association Test. However, unlike previous research, we found that evaluation of any stimuli (and not only the CS) before the CS-only presentations decreases self-reported EC effects. Our results are compatible with the conclusion that the extinction of EC is limited to evaluation measured directly. We discuss the theoretical implications of these results, and conclude that the specific conditions (and mechanisms) that change the direct evaluative response are yet to be clarified. (shrink)

ABSTRACTEvaluative Conditioning is commonly defined as the change in liking of a stimulus due to its pairings with an affective unconditioned stimulus. In Experiment 1, we investigated effects of repeated stimulus pairings on affective responses, i.e. valence and arousal ratings, pupil size, and duration estimation. After repeatedly pairing the CSs with affective USs, a consistent pattern of affective responses emerged: The CSnegative was rated as being more negative and more arousing, resulted in larger pupils, and was temporally overestimated compared to (...) the CSneutral. In Experiment 2, the influence of a mere instruction about the contingency between a CS and US on affective responses was examined. After mere instruction about upcoming pairings between the CS and US, subjective ratings also changed, but there was neither evidence for differential pupillary responses nor for differential temporal processing. The results indicate that EC via pairings or instructions ca... (shrink)