Abstract
Pavlovian aversive conditioning is a fundamental form of learning helping organisms survive in their environment. Previous research has suggested that organisms are prepared to preferentially learn to fear stimuli that have posed threats to survival across evolution. Here, we examined whether enhanced Pavlovian aversive conditioning can occur to stimuli that are relevant to the organism’s concerns beyond biological and evolutionary considerations, and whether such preferential learning is modulated by inter-individual differences in affect and motivation. Seventy-two human participants performed a spatial cueing task where the goal-relevance of initially neutral stimuli was experimentally manipulated. They subsequently underwent a differential Pavlovian aversive conditioning paradigm, in which the goal-relevant and goal-irrelevant stimuli served as conditioned stimuli. Skin conductance response was recorded as an index of the conditioned response and participants’ achievement motivation was measured to examine its impact thereon. Results show that achievement motivation modulated Pavlovian aversive learning to goal-relevant vs. goal-irrelevant stimuli. Participants with high achievement motivation more readily acquired a conditioned response to goal-relevant compared with goal-irrelevant stimuli than did participants with lower achievement motivation. However, no difference was found between goal-relevant and goal-irrelevant stimuli during extinction. These findings suggest that stimuli that are detected as relevant to the organism can induce facilitated Pavlovian aversive conditioning even though they hold no inherent threat value and no biological evolutionary significance, and that the occurrence of such learning bias is critically dependent on inter-individual differences in the organism’s concerns, such as achievement motivation.
Highlights
Pavlovian aversive conditioning is a fundamental form of learning in the animal kingdom, being ubiquitous across a wide variety of species ranging from simple to more complex organisms.[1]
The reaction times in the spatial cueing task were analysed using a repeated-measures general linear model (GLM) assuming compound symmetry covariance structure with stimulus type and stimulus category as within-participant categorical factors, and participants’ standardised (z-score) achievement motivation score as a continuous predictor. This analysis revealed a marginal trend for the main effect of stimulus category, F(2, 140) = 2.85, p = 0.061, η2p = 0.039, 90% confidence interval (CI) [0.000, 0.095]
A polynomial contrast analysis showed a statistically significant linear trend in the reaction times as a function of stimulus category, F(1, 70) = 5.41, p = 0.023, η2p = 0.072, 90% CI [0.005, 0.181], indicating increased reaction times in detecting the target from goal-relevant valid cues (M = 496.52 ms, SD = 129.53) to goal-irrelevant cues (M = 500.92 ms, SD = 147.23) to goal-relevant invalid cues (M = 505.21 ms, SD = 140.12; Fig. 2)
Summary
Pavlovian aversive conditioning is a fundamental form of learning in the animal kingdom, being ubiquitous across a wide variety of species ranging from simple (e.g. fruit fly) to more complex (e.g. human) organisms.[1]. At variance with these evolutionary theories, an alternative framework deriving from appraisal theories of emotion[13,14] asserts that preferential emotional learning is not driven by a threatspecific mechanism, but by a more general mechanism of relevance detection.[15,16] Relevance detection is a rapid and adaptive process that determines whether a stimulus encountered in the environment is relevant to the organism’s concerns, such as their goals, needs, motives, or values.[13,14,16,17,18] Importantly, this proposal allows for incorporating the findings of preferential Pavlovian aversive conditioning to threat-relevant stimuli, as these stimuli are highly relevant for the organism’s survival, and generates new testable predictions: Stimuli that are detected as relevant to the organism’s concerns benefit from preferential emotional learning, regardless of their valence and evolutionary status per se
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