Effect of attentional and neutral instructions and of forward and backward conditioning analogs on response to change from paired stimulus repetition: More evidence relevant to the role of orienting reaction recovery in short-interval classical autonomic conditioning

Abstract

This paper reports two “conditioning analog” investigations of the role of orienting reaction recovery (ORR) in short-interval classical autonomic conditioning. In Experiment 1, 48 subjects received either attentional or neutral instructions and then were presented with a conditioning analog arrangement consisting of 15 pairs (0.5 sec ISI) of 0.5 sec tones and lights (for half the subjects) or lights and tones (for the remaining subjects). This stimulus arrangement was patterned analogously to CS and UCS presentations in classical conditioning and was followed by a single stimulus change trial (light alone or tone alone) with modality counterbalanced across subjects to form appropriate forward and backward conditioning analogs. Significant SCR habituation and recovery were observed over repetition and change trials, respectively, but no effects of the instructional or forward-backward manipulations were found. Only the attentional-forward and neutral-backward groups exhibited HR habituation while only the attentionally-instructed groups gave evidence of HR ORR. Pulse volume showed neither habituation nor recovery and blood volume showed only habituation. The SCR results were interpreted as being consistent with some previous findings on attentional instructions and habituation but not ORR, and as indicating that Badia and Defran's (1970) findings, supporting the involvement of ORR in short-interval classical autonomie conditioning, could not be attributed to their atypical attentional instructions. The HR data were interpreted as being consistent with the ORR literature and as pointing to a greater sensitivity of cardiac than electrodermal responding to attentional factors in a conditioning analog experiment. The SCR and HR data together confirm and extend Furedy and Ginsberg's (1975) findings of no difference in ORR between forward and backward conditioning analogs, yet the magnitude of recovery observed re-opens the issue of the extent of involvement of ORR in short-interval autonomic conditioning (SIAC). The vasomotor data add to the existing empirical confusion concerning the effects of repetition and change on these measures. In Experiment 2, 48 subjects received either the neutral or attentional instructions and then were presented with a conditioning analog arrangement consisting of 10 tone-light (or light-tone) pairings as above interspersed with five single stimulus trials (light alone or tone alone) with modality counterbalanced across subjects to form appropriate forward and backward conditioning analogs. SCR showed dishabituation on paired trials subsequent to a single stimulus trial but HR did not. SCR showed no effects of the instructional or forward-backward manipulations. The SCR, but not the HR, data extend those of Experiment 1, suggesting the need for further investigation of HR habituation and dishabituation. Contrary to OR theory and ORR interpretations of SIAC, however, SCR dishabituation was found to increase over trials. These data were interpreted as indicating a negligible role of ORR in short-interval classical autonomic conditioning.