Nelson, B. 1 , Navarro, A. 1 & P.Leon, S. 2
1 Basic Processes in Psychology. University of the Basque Country. San Sebastian, Spain.
2 Department of Psychology. University of Jaen. Jaen, Spain.
Associative learning goes well beyond “spit and twitch” autonomic responding and provides a framework for investigating how humans and animals learn about and represent their world. Three experiments were conducted to determine the extent to which knowledge about what events were to occur, when they were to occur, and where they would occur, could be assessed with a behavioral associative-learning paradigm in humans. A novel video-game task was used where behavioral responses were associated with the appearance of spaceships, and later those spaceships were predicted by sensors. The discussion of the resulting behavioral data elucidates how the data can be used to show that participants indeed learned what was about to occur in the presence of these signals as well as rich information about when it was about to occur. Eye-tracking, using a SensoMotoric Instruments system, revealed that participants also acquired knowledge of where the predicted event would occur in parallel with both “what” and “when.” Autonomic pupil responses appeared as conditioned responses along with these other response forms, but did not add any significant evidence of association formation over the other measures. Complex processes of learning in humans remain accessible without reliance on self-report.