Context change as the mechanism of reinstatement in causal learning.

Abstract

Four experiments were conducted to explore the mechanism of reinstatement in human causal learning. After a retroactive interference treatment in which a stimulus was first followed by an outcome (A+) and then followed by a different outcome (A*), simple exposure to the original outcome (+) in the interference-test context produced partial reinstatement of the first-learned information (A+). When exposure to the outcome took place in a context different from the interference-test context, reinstatement was not observed (Experiment 1). Equivalent results appeared when the outcome presented during reinstatement was different from the one originally related to the stimulus affected by interference, independent of whether the interfering outcome (Experiments 2, 3, and 4) or a new outcome (Experiments 3 and 4) was presented before the test. These results suggest an interpretation of reinstatement in terms of a context change between interference and testing.