Propositional models of evaluative conditioning postulate that the impact of stimulus pairings on liking should depend not on the pairings themselves but on what the pairings imply about the relation between stimuli. Hence, context manipulations that change the implications of stimulus pairings should moderate evaluative conditioning. We…

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is the valence change of a (typically neutral) stimulus (CS) that is due to the previous pairing with another (typically valent) stimulus (US). It has been repeatedly shown that EC effects are stronger or existent only if participants know which US was paired with which CS. Knowledge of the CS-US pairings is usually…

Evaluative conditioning (EC) is generally considered to be one of the routes via which likes and dislikes are acquired. We identify recent trends in EC research and speculate about the topics that will dominate future research on EC. Many of the recent developments in EC research were shaped by functional definitions of EC that refer only to…

In avoidance learning studies, a warning signal (Sd) is directly paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) unless a particular response is performed. Research by Augustson and Dougher (1997) demonstrated that not only warning signals but also stimuli that are indirectly paired with the aversive event are capable of affecting the…

This article presents a meta-analysis of research on "evaluative conditioning" (EC), defined as a change in the liking of a stimulus (conditioned stimulus; CS) that results from pairing that stimulus with other positive or negative stimuli (unconditioned stimulus; US). Across a total of 214 studies included in the main sample, the mean…

Forward blocking is one of the best-documented phenomena in Pavlovian animal conditioning. According to contemporary associative learning theories, forward blocking arises directly from the hardwired basic learning rules that govern the acquisition or expression of associations. Contrary to this view, here the authors demonstrate that blocking in…

Implicit measures such as the Implicit Association Test (OAT) have recently become popular as tools in research on evaluative conditioning. The reason is that these measures are thought to be impervious to changes in valence that are due to conscious propositional knowledge about the relation between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the…

Background: The selective attention of children with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) to briefly exposed delay-related cues was examined in two experiments using a dot-probe conditioning paradigm. Method: Colour cues were paired with negatively (i.e., imposition of delay) and positively valenced cues (i.e., escape from or avoidance…