Eye Movements Index Implicit Memory Expression in Fear Conditioning. PLoS One 2015;10(11):e0141949
Date
11/13/2015Pubmed ID
26562298Pubmed Central ID
PMC4642991DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0141949Scopus ID
2-s2.0-84955493996 (requires institutional sign-in at Scopus site) 12 CitationsAbstract
The role of contingency awareness in simple associative learning experiments with human participants is currently debated. Since prior work suggests that eye movements can index mnemonic processes that occur without awareness, we used eye tracking to better understand the role of awareness in learning aversive Pavlovian conditioning. A complex real-world scene containing four embedded household items was presented to participants while skin conductance, eye movements, and pupil size were recorded. One item embedded in the scene served as the conditional stimulus (CS). One exemplar of that item (e.g. a white pot) was paired with shock 100 percent of the time (CS+) while a second exemplar (e.g. a gray pot) was never paired with shock (CS-). The remaining items were paired with shock on half of the trials. Participants rated their expectation of receiving a shock during each trial, and these expectancy ratings were used to identify when (i.e. on what trial) each participant became aware of the programmed contingencies. Disproportionate viewing of the CS was found both before and after explicit contingency awareness, and patterns of viewing distinguished the CS+ from the CS-. These observations are consistent with "dual process" models of fear conditioning, as they indicate that learning can be expressed in patterns of viewing prior to explicit contingency awareness.
Author List
Hopkins LS, Schultz DH, Hannula DE, Helmstetter FJAuthor
Fred Helmstetter PhD Professor in the Psychology / Neuroscience department at University of Wisconsin - MilwaukeeMESH terms used to index this publication - Major topics in bold
Analysis of VarianceAwareness
Conditioning, Classical
Electric Stimulation
Eye Movements
Fear
Female
Galvanic Skin Response
Humans
Learning
Male
Memory
Photic Stimulation
Young Adult
