Evaluative Conditioning with Multiple Unconditioned Stimuli – Integration at Learning or at Judgment?
Wed—Casino_1.801—Poster3—8607
Presented by: Florian Weber
Evaluative conditioning (EC) is the change in an attitude towards a conditioned stimulus (CS) due to the pairing of said CS with a positive or negative unconditioned stimulus (US). Recent research investigated how pairings of a CS with multiple USs simultaneously affect CS attitude change, suggesting that conditioned attitudes result from the weighted averaging of affective US information. The present study expands this previous work from a cognitive perspective, investigating whether US information is integrated during the learning or the judgment stage of the conditioning process. A study design was employed in which the CS was simultaneously paired with a positive/negative and a second neutral US. After this conditioning phase, the valence of the neutral US was changed. We find that CS attitude changes in accordance with the valence change of the formerly neutral US, leading to the conclusion that US valence information is integrated at the judgment stage of the EC process.
Keywords: evaluative conditioning, attitudes, memory, evaluation, information integration