ORCID Profile
0000-0002-9833-9998
Current Organisation
University of Newcastle Australia
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Biological Psychology (Neuropsychology, Psychopharmacology, Physiological Psychology) | Decision Making | Cognitive Science | Psychology |
Expanding Knowledge in Psychology and Cognitive Sciences | Mental Health Services
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 22-08-2011
Abstract: Models of attentional allocation in associative learning are typically structured according to one of two guiding principles: the predictiveness principle, which posits that attention is paid to cues that have reliably predicted an outcome in the past, or the uncertainty principle, which states that attention is paid to cues about which little is known. Both principles are well supported by studies of animals. However, in studies of human learning, there is very little direct empirical support for the uncertainty principle. In the study reported here, we addressed this gap by investigating negative transfer, a phenomenon that may provide unique support for the uncertainty principle. In two human learning experiments using an allergist task, we replicated the primary findings of previous research on animal learning. We believe that these data provide the first direct evidence for the uncertainty principle in human associative learning.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 21-09-2011
DOI: 10.3758/S13423-011-0155-0
Abstract: Recent research has examined how people predict unobserved features of an object when its category membership is ambiguous. The debate has focused on whether predictions are based solely on information from the most likely category, or whether information from other possible categories is also used. In the present experiment, we compared these category-based approaches with feature conjunction reasoning, where predictions are based on a comparison among exemplars (rather than categories) that share features with a target object. Reasoning strategies were assessed by examining patterns of feature prediction and by using an eye gaze measure of attention during induction. The main findings were (1) the majority of participants used feature conjunction rather than categorical strategies, (2) people predominantly gazed at the exemplars that were most similar to the target object, and (3) although people gazed most at the most probable category to which an object could belong, they also attended to other plausible category alternatives during induction. These findings question the extent to which category-based reasoning is used for induction when category membership is uncertain.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 31-12-2015
DOI: 10.1111/BJOP.12175
Abstract: The relationship between learned variations in attention and schizotypy was examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, participants low on a negative subscale of schizotypy exhibited an explicit bias in overt attention towards stimuli that were established as predictive of a trial outcome, relative to stimuli that were irrelevant. The same participants also showed a bias in learning about these stimuli when they presented in a novel context. Neither of these effects was observed in participants high in schizotypy. In Experiment 2, participants low on the negative subscale of schizotypy exhibited faster reaction times towards a target that was cued by a stimulus that had a history of predictive validity relative to a stimulus that had a history of irrelevance. Again, this effect was not present in participants high in schizotypy. These results imply a disruption in the normal allocation of attention to cues that have predictive significance in schizotypy.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
Date: 08-2010
DOI: 10.1111/J.1601-5215.2010.00475.X
Abstract: Walter G, Byrne S, Griffiths O, Hunt G, Soh N, Cleary M, Duffy P, Crawford G, Krabman P, Concannon P, Malhi G. Can young people reliably rate side effects of low-dose antipsychotic medication using a self-report survey?
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 27-12-2012
DOI: 10.3758/S13420-011-0056-0
Abstract: In three experiments, we used the allergist task to examine the role of error correction mechanisms in the acquisition and extinction of causal judgments in people. Consistent with existing human and animal studies, acquisition of causal judgments was influenced by the discrepancy between the allergenic outcome and that predicted by all of the cues present on a trial (the "common error" term). However, in the present experiments, we failed to detect any evidence for the use of a common error term in extinction learning: Judgments of the allergenic properties of a cue were unaffected by the predictive value of the other cues present on a trial. This asymmetry in the use of a common error term in acquisition and extinction learning is inconsistent with previous animal studies and also with most models of associative learning. However, approaches that allow learning to be specific to a particular arrangement of elemental cues (context specific and state based) offer some explanation of the observed asymmetry.
Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Date: 10-10-2017
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2008
DOI: 10.1037/A0013685
Abstract: Four experiments examined the role of selective attention in a new causal judgment task that allowed measurement of both causal strength and cue recognition. In Experiments 1 and 2, blocking was observed pretraining with 1 cue (A) resulted in reduced learning about a 2nd cue (B) when those 2 cues were trained in compound (AB+). Participants also demonstrated decreased recognition performance for the causally redundant Cue B, suggesting that less attention had been paid to it in training. This is consistent with the idea that attention is preferentially allocated toward the more predictive Cue A, and away from the less predictive Cue B (e.g., N. J. Mackintosh, 1975). Contrary to this hypothesis, in Experiments 3 and 4, participants demonstrated poorer recognition for the most predictive cues, relative to control cues. A new model, which is based on N. J. Mackintosh's (1975) model, is proposed to account for the observed relationship between the extent to which each cue is attended to, learned about, and later recognized
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 04-04-2014
DOI: 10.1080/13546805.2014.897601
Abstract: There is now significant evidence that prediction error signalling is mediated by dopamine in the midbrain, and that dopamine dysfunction is implicated in people experiencing psychotic symptoms, including delusions. There has also been significant theorizing and experimentation concerning the remaining link in this triad, namely that deviant prediction error signalling produces or maintains psychotic symptoms. The research supporting the link between prediction error signalling and delusional symptoms was reviewed. Numerous studies indirectly support this link, but only one set of studies claim to directly test this hypothesis by combining three crucial elements: a patient s le, a manipulation of prediction error and neuroimaging. This particular set of studies were examined in detail. Important methodological limitations in these studies were observed, and a reinterpretation of their data was offered. Methodological inconsistencies significantly weaken the claims made by these studies, but their data are consistent with current theorizing and they are instructive for future lines of inquiry in this field.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2014
DOI: 10.1037/XAN0000006
Abstract: Two studies of human contingency learning investigated the influence of stimulus salience on the cue competition effect of blocking. These studies demonstrated that blocking (defined as a difference in responding to blocked and control cues) was greater for target cues that had high "semantic salience" than those of lower salience. Moreover participants showed weaker responding to high salience blocked cues than low salience blocked cues, but a corresponding difference was not observed for control cues. These findings suggest that the influence of relative salience on associative learning depends on the relative validity of the cues in question. Use of eye tracking in Experiment 2 demonstrated that participants' overt attention to cues was also influenced by both relative salience and relative validity. We describe three associative learning models, based on the attentional theory proposed by Mackintosh (1975), that are able to account for our key findings.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 24-06-2016
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 02-2015
DOI: 10.1037/XGE0000037
Abstract: Attention provides the gateway to cognition, by selecting certain stimuli for further analysis. Recent research demonstrates that whether a stimulus captures attention is not determined solely by its physical properties, but is malleable, being influenced by our previous experience of rewards obtained by attending to that stimulus. Here we show that this influence of reward learning on attention extends to task-irrelevant stimuli. In a visual search task, certain stimuli signaled the magnitude of available reward, but reward delivery was not contingent on responding to those stimuli. Indeed, any attentional capture by these critical distractor stimuli led to a reduction in the reward obtained. Nevertheless, distractors signaling large reward produced greater attentional and oculomotor capture than those signaling small reward. This counterproductive capture by task-irrelevant stimuli is important because it demonstrates how external reward structures can produce patterns of behavior that conflict with task demands, and similar processes may underlie problematic behavior directed toward real-world rewards.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 03-01-2015
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2015
DOI: 10.1037/XAN0000042
Abstract: Much of contemporary associative learning research is focused on understanding how and when the associative history of cues affects later learning about those cues. Very little work has investigated the effects of the associative history of outcomes on human learning. Three experiments extended the "learned irrelevance" paradigm from the animal conditioning literature to examine the influence of an outcome's prior predictability on subsequent learning of relationships between cues and that outcome. All 3 experiments found evidence for the idea that learning is biased by the prior predictability of the outcome. Previously predictable outcomes were readily associated with novel predictive cues, whereas previously unpredictable outcomes were more readily associated with novel nonpredictive cues. This finding highlights the importance of considering the associative history of outcomes, as well as cues, when interpreting multistage designs. Associative and cognitive explanations of this certainty matching effect are discussed.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 23-03-2016
DOI: 10.1111/PSYP.12649
Abstract: A cross-modal symbolic paradigm was used to elicit EEG activity related to semantic incongruence. Twenty-five undergraduate students viewed pairings of visual lexical cues (e.g., DOG) with congruent (50% of trials) or incongruent (50%) auditory nonlexical stimuli (animal vocalizations e.g., sound of a dog woofing or a cat meowing). In one condition, many different pairs of congruent/incongruent stimuli were shown, whereas in a second condition only two pairs of stimuli were repeatedly shown. A typical N400-like pattern of incongruence-related activity (including activity in the N2 time window) was evident in the condition using many stimuli, whereas the incongruence-related activity in the two-stimuli condition was confined to differential N2-like activity. A supplementary analysis excluded stimulus characteristics as the source of this differential activity between conditions. We found that a single in idual performing a fixed task can demonstrate either a protracted N400-like pattern of activity or a more temporally focused N2-like pattern of activity in response to the same stimulus, which suggests that the N2 may be a precursor to the protracted N400 response.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 24-08-2018
DOI: 10.1111/BJOP.12344
Abstract: Superstitions are common, yet we have little understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that bring them about. This study used a laboratory-based analogue for superstitious beliefs that involved people monitoring the relationship between undertaking an action (pressing a button) and an outcome occurring (a light illuminating). The task was arranged such that there was no objective contingency between pressing the button and the light illuminating - the light was just as likely to illuminate whether the button was pressed or not. Nevertheless, most people rated the causal relationship between the button press and the light illuminating to be moderately positive, demonstrating an illusion of causality. This study found that the magnitude of this illusion was predicted by people's level of endorsement of common superstitious beliefs (measured using a novel Superstitious Beliefs Questionnaire), but was not associated with mood variables or their self-rated locus of control. This observation is consistent with a more general in idual difference or bias to overweight conjunctive events over disjunctive events during causal reasoning in those with a propensity for superstitious beliefs.
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2012
DOI: 10.1037/A0026038
Abstract: Previous research has suggested that when feature inferences have to be made about an instance whose category membership is uncertain, feature-based inductive reasoning is used to the exclusion of category-based induction. These results contrast with the observation that people can and do use category-based induction when category membership is known. The present experiments examined the conditions that drive feature-based and category-based strategies in induction under category uncertainty. Specifically, 2 experiments investigated whether reliance on feature-based inductive strategies is a product of the lack of coherence in the categories used in previous research or is due to the use of a decision-only induction procedure. Experiment 1 found that feature-based reasoning remained the preferred strategy even when categories with relatively high internal coherence were used. Experiment 2 found a shift toward category-based reasoning when participants were trained to classify category members prior to feature induction. Together, these results suggest that an appropriate conceptual representation must be formed through experience with a category before it is likely to be used as a basis for feature induction.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 05-04-2017
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2011
DOI: 10.1037/A0021384
Abstract: Two experiments used eye-tracking procedures to investigate the relationship between attention and associative learning in human participants. These experiments found greater overt attention to cues experienced as predictive of the outcomes with which they were paired, than to cues experienced as nonpredictive. Moreover, this attentional bias persisted into a second training phase when all cues were equally predictive of the outcomes with which they were paired, and it was accompanied by a related bias in the rate of learning about these cues. These findings are consistent with the attentional model of associative learning proposed by Mackintosh (1975), but not with that proposed by Pearce and Hall (1980).
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2012
DOI: 10.1037/A0027385
Abstract: Cues that reliably predict an outcome in an initial phase of training (Phase 1) are learned faster in a second phase of training (Phase 2) than cues that were unreliable in Phase 1. This result is observed despite objectively equal relationships between the cues and the outcomes in Phase 2, and consequently constitutes a nonnormative bias in learning. The present experiments sought to confirm that this learned predictiveness effect is the product of attentional processes (Experiment 1), and to test further whether these processes are under voluntary control or are automatic in nature (Experiment 2). In addition to the usual outcome prediction measure, eye-gaze behavior was also monitored. The results indicated an important role for top-down strategic attentional processes in the learned predictiveness task. In contrast, no evidence for an automatic attentional bias was found.
Publisher: Oxford University Press (OUP)
Date: 20-01-2013
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 08-2018
DOI: 10.1037/XLM0000529
Abstract: Within the domain of associative learning, there is substantial evidence that people (and other animals) select among environmental cues on the basis of their reinforcement history. Specifically, people preferentially attend to, and learn about, cueing stimuli that have previously predicted events of consequence (a predictiveness bias). By contrast, relatively little is known about whether people prioritize some (to-be-predicted) outcome events over others on the basis of their past experience with those outcomes (a predictability bias). The present experiments assessed whether the prior predictability of a stimulus results in a learning bias in a contingency learning task, as such effects are not anticipated by formal models of associative learning. Previously unpredictable stimuli were less readily learned about than previously predictable stimuli. This pattern is unlikely to reflect the use of strategic search processes or blocking of learning by the context. Instead we argue that our findings are most consistent with the operation of a biased learning mechanism. (PsycINFO Database Record
Publisher: eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Date: 04-12-2017
DOI: 10.7554/ELIFE.28197
Abstract: Efference copies refer to internal duplicates of movement-producing neural signals. Their primary function is to predict, and often suppress, the sensory consequences of willed movements. Efference copies have been almost exclusively investigated in the context of overt movements. The current electrophysiological study employed a novel design to show that inner speech – the silent production of words in one’s mind – is also associated with an efference copy. Participants produced an inner phoneme at a precisely specified time, at which an audible phoneme was concurrently presented. The production of the inner phoneme resulted in electrophysiological suppression, but only if the content of the inner phoneme matched the content of the audible phoneme. These results demonstrate that inner speech – a purely mental action – is associated with an efference copy with detailed auditory properties. These findings suggest that inner speech may ultimately reflect a special type of overt speech.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2018
DOI: 10.1016/J.SCHRES.2017.11.005
Abstract: There is evidence to suggest that people with established psychotic disorders show impairments in the mismatch negativity induced by a frequency-deviant sound (fMMN), and that these impairments worsen with the deterioration of psychotic symptoms. This study aimed to test whether in iduals at ultra-high risk (UHR) for psychosis show pre-morbid impairments in fMMN, and if so, whether fMMN continues to deteriorate with transition to psychosis. fMMN was recorded in a cohort of UHR in iduals (n=42) and compared to healthy controls (n=29). Of the 27 UHR participants who returned for a second EEG session, six participants had transitioned to psychosis by 12-month follow-up (UHR-T) and were compared to the 21 participants who did not transition (UHR-NT). fMMN litude was significantly reduced, relative to healthy controls, in the UHR cohort. Furthermore, UHR-T in iduals showed a significant decrease in fMMN litude over the period from baseline to post-transition this reduction was not observed in UHR-NT. These results suggest that fMMN is abnormal in UHR in iduals, as has repeatedly been found previously in people with established psychotic disorders. The finding that fMMN impairment worsens with transition to psychosis is consistent with the staging model of psychosis however, caution must be taken in interpreting these findings, given the extremely small s le size of the UHR-T group.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 10-01-2021
Abstract: Among neurocognitive accounts of delusions, there is a growing consensus that it is the certainty with which delusions are held, rather than their content that defines some beliefs as delusional. On a continuum model of psychosis, this inappropriate certainty ought to be present (albeit in an attenuated form) in healthy adults who score highly in schizotypy. It was hypothesised that this might be most evident in circumstances where the environment provides incomplete or probabilistic information, which thereby forces the participant to hold two imperfectly supported, concurrent hypotheses in mind. A cued visual search task was used to measure people’s capacity to use partially predictive information (i.e., a cue that predicted the target may occur in one of the two locations) to facilitate speeded responding. As hypothesised, people’s performance on the trials that required holding two hypotheses in mind concurrently was significantly and specifically associated with the positive components of schizotypy. This finding is consistent with a hyperfocusing of attention in schizophrenia, and may help explain why delusion-prone in iduals have a tendency to “jump to conclusions” or be resistant to disconfirming information when faced with multiple, partially supported hypotheses.
Publisher: Informa UK Limited
Date: 09-2008
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 07-2019
DOI: 10.1037/XAN0000210
Abstract: Previous studies of human associative learning have demonstrated that people's experience with a cueing stimulus will change how that cue is treated during subsequent learning. Typically, studies have shown that people pay more attention to cues that were informative in the past, and learn new information about these cues more rapidly (these cues are said to have a higher associability). It has recently been shown that to-be-predicted events (outcomes) can also differ in their associability as a consequence of prior experience. However, to date there is no direct evidence that this change in associability is accompanied by a change in attention, which would provide stronger evidence of a parallel with the effects observed previously with cueing stimuli. In two experiments, we examined this question by tracking eye-gaze to provide a measure of participants' overt attention, as they completed a cued visual search task in which outcome predictability was manipulated. The prior predictability of an outcome stimulus biased eye-gaze and learning rate, in a manner reminiscent of the gaze biases observed in tasks that manipulate cue associability. The present results support the view that outcomes, like cues, can vary in the degree to which they attract both attention and learning resources, as a function of their associative history. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 12-2010
DOI: 10.3758/PBR.17.6.869
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 27-06-2014
DOI: 10.3758/S13420-014-0146-X
Abstract: Studies in laboratory animals have shown that the extinction of a conditioned stimulus, A, is regulated by the associative history of a second stimulus, X, when the two are extinguished in simultaneous compound: An inhibitory X protects A from extinction (Rescorla Learning & Behavior, 31, 124-132, 2003), whereas an excitatory X facilitates, and under some circumstances deepens, the extinction of A (Rescorla Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 26, 251-260, 2000, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, 32, 135-144, 2006). In the present study, we used the allergist task to examine whether the extinction of causal judgments in people is similarly regulated by the causal status of co-present stimuli. Experiment 1 showed that a cue trained as a conditioned inhibitor protected a target cue from extinction: The target extinguished in compound with the inhibitor was rated as being more causal of the outcome than was a target extinguished in compound with a control cue lacking inhibitory properties. In contrast, the remaining experiments showed that the extinction of a target cue was regulated by the presence, but not the causal status, of a partner cue: Target cues extinguished in compound were protected from extinction, and no evidence showed that an already extinguished partner conferred more protection (Exp. 2), or that an excitatory partner conferred any less protection (Exps. 2 and 3), or that an excitatory partner deepened the extinction of its already extinguished target. These findings are inconsistent with elemental models that rely on a common error term to explain associative changes in extinction. They are largely, but not completely, consistent with the configural model proposed by Pearce (Psychological Review, 94, 61-73, 1987), which predicts an ordering of levels of protection that was not observed.
Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 2021
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2008
DOI: 10.1037/0097-7403.34.4.423
Abstract: A series of experiments studied the amount learned about two food cues (A and B) whose presentation in a meal was followed by an allergy (+) in a fictitious patient. Participants were trained with A+ and C+ in Phase 1 and then with AB+ or AB++ in Phase 2. Subsequent testing revealed that BC was more allergenic than AD, showing that more had been learned about B than A in Phase 2. Participants were also trained with A+, then with AB+, and finally with AB++. The results of interpolating AB+ between A+ and AB++ training were consistent with the hypothesis that pretraining with Cue A selectively suppressed attention to its associate across the AB+ trials and, thereby, reduced the amount subsequently learned about B on AB++ trials.
Publisher: Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Date: 02-2009
DOI: 10.3758/LB.37.1.27
Publisher: Society for Neuroscience
Date: 13-02-2017
DOI: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3205-16.2017
Abstract: Recent research has shown that perceptual processing of stimuli previously associated with high-value rewards is automatically prioritized even when rewards are no longer available. It has been hypothesized that such reward-related modulation of stimulus salience is conceptually similar to an “attentional habit.” Recording event-related potentials in humans during a reinforcement learning task, we show strong evidence in favor of this hypothesis. Resistance to outcome devaluation (the defining feature of a habit) was shown by the stimulus-locked P1 component, reflecting activity in the extrastriate visual cortex. Analysis at longer latencies revealed a positive component (corresponding to the P3b, from 550–700 ms) sensitive to outcome devaluation. Therefore, distinct spatiotemporal patterns of brain activity were observed corresponding to habitual and goal-directed processes. These results demonstrate that reinforcement learning engages both attentional habits and goal-directed processes in parallel. Consequences for brain and computational models of reinforcement learning are discussed. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The human attentional network adapts to detect stimuli that predict important rewards. A recent hypothesis suggests that the visual cortex automatically prioritizes reward-related stimuli, driven by cached representations of reward value that is, stimulus–response habits. Alternatively, the neural system may track the current value of the predicted outcome. Our results demonstrate for the first time that visual cortex activity is increased for reward-related stimuli even when the rewarding event is temporarily devalued. In contrast, longer-latency brain activity was specifically sensitive to transient changes in reward value. Therefore, we show that both habit-like attention and goal-directed processes occur in the same learning episode at different latencies. This result has important consequences for computational models of reinforcement learning.
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Date: 09-02-2017
Publisher: American Psychological Association (APA)
Date: 2019
DOI: 10.1037/XAN0000195
Abstract: Much empirical work and theoretical discussion in the associative learning literature has focused on when and how a cue changes in its associability. A series of new findings in human learning preparations (collectively referred to as the "outcome predictability" effect) appear to show that outcomes vary in their capacity to enter into novel associations as a product of their associative history. This effect is reminiscent of how cues change in associability as a consequence of their reinforcement history. We review the new findings within a broader associative literature that has previously investigated how conditioning can modify the effectiveness of outcome events to motivate new learning. A variety of explanations arising from this review are then critically considered. The article concludes by identifying novel questions brought into focus by the outcome predictability effect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 09-2013
DOI: 10.1080/17470218.2012.752854
Abstract: In laboratory contingency learning tasks, people usually give accurate estimates of the degree of contingency between a cue and an outcome. However, if they are asked to estimate the probability of the outcome in the presence of the cue, they tend to be biased by the probability of the outcome in the absence of the cue. This bias is often attributed to an automatic contingency detection mechanism, which is said to act via an excitatory associative link to activate the outcome representation at the time of testing. We conducted 3 experiments to test alternative accounts of contingency bias. Participants were exposed to the same outcome probability in the presence of the cue, but different outcome probabilities in the absence of the cue. Phrasing the test question in terms of frequency rather than probability and clarifying the test instructions reduced but did not eliminate contingency bias. However, removal of ambiguity regarding the presence of additional causes during the test phase did eliminate contingency bias. We conclude that contingency bias may be due to ambiguity in the test question, and therefore it does not require postulation of a separate associative link-based mechanism.
Start Date: 03-2015
End Date: 12-2018
Amount: $328,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded ActivityStart Date: 06-2019
End Date: 12-2023
Amount: $180,000.00
Funder: Australian Research Council
View Funded Activity