Elsevier

Cognition

Volume 208, March 2021, 104546
Cognition

Evidence that instrumental conditioning requires conscious awareness in humans

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104546Get rights and content

Abstract

Instrumental conditioning is a crucial substrate of adaptive behaviour, allowing individuals to selectively interact with the stimuli in their environment to maximise benefit and minimise harm. The extent to which complex forms of learning, such as instrumental conditioning, are possible without conscious awareness is a topic of considerable importance and ongoing debate. In light of recent theoretical and empirical contributions casting doubt on the early demonstrations of unconscious instrumental conditioning, we revisit the question of its feasibility in two modes of conditioning. In Experiment 1, we used trace conditioning, following a prominent paradigm (Pessiglione et al., 2008) and enhancing its sensitivity. Success in this task requires participants to learn to approach reward-predictive stimuli and avoid punishment-predictive stimuli through monetary reinforcement. All stimuli were rendered unconscious using forward-backward masking. In Experiment 2, we used delay conditioning to shorten the stimulus-outcome delay, retaining the structure of the original task but presenting the stimuli under continuous flash suppression to allow for an overlap of the stimulus, action, and outcome, as well as replacing monetary reinforcement with primary appetitive reinforcement. In both experiments, we found evidence for absence of unconscious instrumental conditioning, showing that participants were unable to learn to adjust their behaviour to approach positive stimuli and avoid negative ones. This result is consistent with evidence that unconscious stimuli fail to bring about long-term behavioural adaptations, and provides empirical evidence to support theoretical proposals that consciousness might be necessary for adaptive behaviour, where selective action is required.

Introduction

The extent to which learning can proceed without conscious awareness has been an extensively studied question. While there have been successful demonstrations that simple associations can be learned without conscious awareness of the stimuli, even between different modalities (e.g. Scott et al., 2018), the possibility of successful unconscious learning at increasing levels of complexity is unclear. One example of a complex learning process which has previously been suggested to proceed without cue awareness is instrumental conditioning, where agents learn the contingencies between stimuli in the world and their outcomes, and to selectively act upon them (e.g. approach/avoid; Mastropasqua and Turatto, 2015; Palminteri et al., 2012; Palminteri et al., 2009; Pessiglione et al., 2008). However, emerging evidence suggests that more complex forms of learning, including instrumental conditioning (Reber et al., 2018), contingency learning (Travers et al., 2018), and fear conditioning (Mertens and Engelhard, 2020) may not be possible unconsciously, as originally thought. Adding fuel to the debate are developments in experimental and statistical methods used to reliably assess absence of awareness (Dienes, 2015a; Rothkirch and Hesselmann, 2017; Shanks, 2017). With this in mind, we revisit the topic of unconscious instrumental conditioning. Instrumental learning is critical to adaptive behaviour (both ontogenetically and phylogenetically). As such, the extent to which it is feasible without conscious awareness is a question of considerable importance. In what follows, we attempt to conceptually replicate the original findings of Pessiglione et al. (2008), employing more sensitive methods and a more robust statistical approach, in two different paradigms: a trace conditioning task using monetary reinforcements, following the original task (Experiment 1), and a delay conditioning task with appetitive and aversive primary reinforcements (Experiment 2).

Past research into unconscious learning suggests that simple forms of associative learning, ranging from classical conditioning, to emotional, visuospatial, or multisensory learning can proceed without conscious awareness of the stimuli (Clark and Squire, 1998; Faivre et al., 2014; Knight et al., 2003; Lin and He, 2009; Olsson and Phelps, 2004; Rosenthal et al., 2016; Rosenthal et al., 2010; Scott et al., 2018; Seitz et al., 2009). Learning is usually indexed with presence or absence of the conditioned response, or with reaction times (e.g. where shorter reaction times to congruent vs incongruent pairings are indicative of learning). Unaware learning (as well as priming) is typically observed when stimuli are presented at short spatiotemporal intervals, or concurrently (van Gaal et al., 2012). For example, unaware classical conditioning was demonstrated in delay scenarios (where stimuli to be associated overlap temporally), but not in trace scenarios (where they are separated by an interval; Clark and Squire, 1998).

In contrast, instrumental conditioning can be classified as a more complex process. Agents must not only learn the associations between different stimuli, or stimuli and their outcomes, but also deploy action selectively (e.g. approach or avoid), and adapt their behaviour in the long-term. This involves integrating information over a long temporal scale and distinct modalities, as involved in processing the visual input, extracting its predictive value, deploying a selective response, processing the reinforcement, and comparing the expected outcome with the actual outcome in order to update the representations of stimulus value. As such, it is a considerably more complex process than the aforementioned simpler forms of associative learning, which do not require selective decisions on whether to act or not, or a behavioural adaptation from trial to trial.

Past theoretical and empirical accounts of conscious versus unconscious processing suggest that such an increased level of complexity should require conscious access. A number of theoretical contributions propose that consciousness is related to long-lasting, long-range connections between distinct brain regions, supporting recurrent information integration across distinct cognitive modules (Dehaene et al., 2014; Dehaene and Changeux, 2011; Dehaene and Naccache, 2001a; Lamme, 2006; Mudrik et al., 2014). As such, low-level or short-range (spatial or temporal) information integration might be possible without conscious awareness, but consciousness might be necessary at increased levels of complexity – for example, semantic knowledge, complex visual processing, decision-making and problem-solving (Baars, 2002), all of which involve integration of information across longer spatiotemporal intervals or larger spatial distance. Indeed, neuroimaging evidence has found conscious processing to be characterised by global, long-range spread of activity, in contrast to more localised, shorter-range projections when processing is unconscious (Baars, 2002; Baars et al., 2003; Dehaene et al., 2001; Dehaene et al., 2014; Dehaene and Naccache, 2001b; Melloni et al., 2007).

Another important consideration is related to the methodology of assessing absence of consciousness during task performance. Although it is a frequent practice in unconscious processing research to infer absence of awareness when a behavioural measure (e.g. conditioning, priming, etc.) is above chance, while an independent measure of awareness is not significantly different from chance (e.g. a separate unconscious discrimination task), this approach has drawn criticism (Dienes, 2015a; Vadillo et al., 2016). Finding that performance on a separate awareness check does not differ from chance is not enough to infer true absence of awareness – a non-significant result cannot disambiguate between absence of an effect (i.e. support for the null hypothesis) and absence of evidence for an effect (i.e. insensitive data). In a meta-analysis, Vadillo et al. (2016) argue that the seemingly chance-performance on this type of awareness test is more likely to reflect a false negative, especially in low-powered studies with a small sample. This approach, also adopted in the Pessiglione et al study, can be rectified in two ways. One is to ensure that the methods to assess awareness are relevant and sensitive (Berry and Dienes, 1993; Shanks, 2017; Shanks and St. John, 1994). This could be achieved by, for instance, a closer similarity between the awareness test and the measure of interest. The second is to apply statistical methods, such as the Bayes factor, which allows to determine whether a null result indicates support for the null (e.g. absence of awareness) over the alternative hypothesis (presence of awareness), or whether the data are insensitive (Dienes, 2014, Dienes, 2016; Sand and Nilsson, 2016). Both of those approaches will be used in the present paper to ensure true absence of awareness.

Instrumental conditioning is a crucial substrate of adaptive behaviour. Understanding whether it is achievable without conscious awareness is therefore of vital importance for theoretical and practical research investigating the boundaries of unconscious processing. With recent research casting doubt on feasibility of more complex forms of unconscious learning, as well as the methodological and statistical artifacts which can contribute to falsely assuming absence of awareness, it is imperative to rigorously address the question of feasibility of unconscious instrumental conditioning. Here, we present two experimental attempts to conceptually replicate Pessiglione and colleagues’ unconscious instrumental conditioning task (also employed in Mastropasqua and Turatto, 2015; Palminteri et al., 2009, and Palminteri et al., 2012). The original task constituted trace conditioning – participants learned the association between the subliminally presented stimulus and its outcome (presented supraliminally as monetary reinforcement), with an intervening gap of 3 seconds, during which action could have been executed (approach) or not (avoid). Experiment 1 is closely based on this paradigm, similarly adopting trace conditioning, and introducing minor methodological changes to enhance the sensitivity of the task. Experiment 2 seeks to evaluate whether unconscious instrumental conditioning can be achieved under conditions previously found to be more favourable for unconscious learning, namely where there is no temporal delay between the stimulus and outcome. Hence, Experiment 2 is a delay instrumental conditioning task, retaining the general structure of the original task, but ensuring that stimulus presentation overlaps with both the response, and the delivery of the reinforcement. To allow for the overlap of all three (which is not possible in just the visual domain), we replaced the secondary visual (monetary) reinforcement with primary reinforcement (appetitive and aversive tastes), which have been previously shown to be highly effective in achieving learning in humans (Birbaumer et al., 2015; Martin-Soelch et al., 2007; Parkinson et al., 2000). The strong spatiotemporal overlap was designed in order to maximise the chance of observing conditioning. Notably, primary reinforcements might also offer a stronger incentive to learn. In both experiments, we used Bayes Factors (including robustness regions) to determine whether the results sensitively support the null hypothesis (i.e. absence of learning) or the alternative hypothesis (presence of learning).

Section snippets

Experiment 1

Experiment 1 sought to conceptually replicate the unconscious instrumental conditioning task (Pessiglione et al., 2008), where participants learned to associate predictive cues with reward and punishment, and to adjust their behaviour accordingly by responding (Go) only to rewarding cues, and refraining from a response (NoGo) to punishing cues. Here, we retained the structure of the task, and introduced a number of changes to increase the sensitivity of the paradigm. Firstly, we used a

Experiment 2

Experiment 2 sought to conceptually replicate the unconscious instrumental conditioning task again, this time shortening the stimulus-outcome delay. To achieve this, we used a delay conditioning paradigm, while retaining as much of the structure of the original task as possible. As such, we employed the same Go/NoGo task, where participants learned to associate predictive cues with reward and punishment, and to adjust their behaviour accordingly by responding (Go) only to rewarding cues, and

General discussion

The extent to which complex forms of learning, such as instrumental conditioning, are possible without conscious awareness is still an unresolved question. To our knowledge, evidence for unconscious instrumental learning has been limited (Mastropasqua and Turatto, 2015; Pessiglione et al., 2008) and disputed (Reber et al., 2018). Yet, instrumental behaviour is a vital and one of the oldest forms of adaptive behaviour (both phylogenetically and ontogenetically). As such, we consider the extent

Credit Author Statement

LS: Conceptualisation, Investigation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, review & editing. MY: Resources. HC: Resources. RS: Supervision, Methodology, Writing – review & editing.

Declaration of Competing Interest

None

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science, funded by the Sir Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation, and the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex.

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