Abstract IBN9407326 Ruth Colwill This award supports continuing analysis of the way in which information is represented about basic instrumental and Pavlovian conditioning operations. The primary goal of this research is to characterize the nature of the associative structures that mediate instrumental, goal-directed behavior. During the two year funding period, Dr. Colwill and her colleagues will pursue two issues. First, they will examine the influence of multiple outcome associates of the response on leaning about stimuli that signal the occurrence of those outcomes. They will analyze cues that resolve the ambiguity of the response's potential consequences and compare them with cues that predict multiple outcomes nondifferentially. The hypothesis being tested is that the former condition generates hierarchical learning whereas the latter produces pairwise associations between the stimulus (S), response (R) and outcomes (O). Second, they will examine the integrity of these two structures when the same stimulus is exposed concurrently to training situation, each of which separately promotes different associative structures. In addition, they will continue their analysis of the properties of binary associations. The focus will be on two questions; (1) the nature of the association between S and R, and (2) the relative contributions of R-O and O-R associations to performance of extensively trained responses. This issue is important to settle not only for theoretical reasons but because knowledge of the associations influencing performance is crucial to understanding the mechanisms underlying sensitivity to the R-O contingency.
