Motivational (i.e., appetitive or aversive) cues can bias value-based decisions by affecting either direction and intensity of instrumental actions. Despite several findings describing important interindividual differences in these biases, whether biological sex can also play a role is still up to debate. By comparing females and males in both…

Perception and perceptual memory play crucial roles in fear generalization, yet their dynamic interaction remains understudied. This research (N = 80) explored their relationship through a classical differential conditioning experiment. Results revealed that while fear context perception fluctuates over time with a drift effect, perceptual memory…

Learning is a functional state of the brain that should be understood as a continuous process, rather than being restricted to the very moment of its acquisition, storage, or retrieval. The cerebellum operates by comparing predicted states with actual states, learning from errors, and updating its internal representation to minimize errors. In…

Conditioned reinforcers are widely used in applied behavior analysis. Basic research evidence reveals that Pavlovian learning plays an important role in the acquisition and efficacy of new conditioned-reinforcer functions. Thus, a better understanding of Pavlovian principles holds the promise of improving the efficacy of conditioned reinforcement…

The present study aims to understand children's behavior within classroom settings in terms of conditioning theories. It was designed based on grounded theory. Data were collected through participant observation and 98 children whose ages varied between 6 and 10 years were observed. Data were inductively analyzed. Findings indicated that…

Eyeblink conditioning is used in many species to study motor learning and make inferences about cerebellar function. However, the discrepancies in performance between humans and other species combined with evidence that volition and awareness can modulate learning suggest that eyeblink conditioning is not merely a passive form of learning that…

One of the major questions in psychology is whether associative and nonassociative learning are fundamentally different or whether they involve similar processes and mechanisms. We have addressed this question by comparing mechanisms of a nonassociative form of learning, sensitization, and an associative form of learning, classical conditioning of…

Before implementing the Competency-Based Approach (CBA) in 2003, the Algerian educational system was based on traditional teaching methods that focused mainly on acquiring the knowledge about language delivered by the teacher and the amount of information the learner could accumulate to pass the exams. Although CBA has shifted the teacher's role…

Long-term but not short-term memory and synaptic plasticity in many brain areas require neurotrophin signaling, transcription, and epigenetic mechanisms including DNA methylation. However, it has been difficult to relate these cellular mechanisms directly to behavior because of the immense complexity of the mammalian brain. To address that…

Sign-tracking is a form of autoshaping where animals develop conditioned responding directed toward stimuli predictive of an outcome even though the outcome is not contingent on the animal's behavior. Sign-tracking behaviors are thought to arise out of the attribution of incentive salience (i.e., motivational value) to reward-predictive cues. It…

The creation of auditory threat Pavlovian memory requires an initial learning stage in which a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS), such as a tone, is paired with an aversive one (US), such as a shock. In this phase, the CS acquires the capacity of predicting the occurrence of the US and therefore elicits conditioned defense responses.…

Traumatic experiences early in life can contribute to the development of mood and anxiety disorders that manifest during adolescence and young adulthood. In young rats exposed to acute fear or stress, alterations in neural development can lead to enduring behavioral abnormalities. Here, we used a modified extinction intervention…

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…

Fear-relevant stimuli such as snakes and spiders are thought to capture attention due to evolutionary significance. Classical conditioning experiments indicate that these stimuli accelerate learning, while instructed extinction experiments suggest they may be less responsive to instructions. We manipulated stimulus type during instructed aversive…

In a series of three experiments, I investigated the emergence of conditioned seeing, defined as delayed drawing responses, as a potential component of bidirectional naming (BiN) for unfamiliar stimuli, which was defined in this study as the emergence of untaught listener and speaker responses following a naming experience with school-aged…