The rise and fall and rise again? Of associative processes in human contingency learning

Abstract

Dickinson, Shanks, & Evenden claimed 30 years ago that associative processes may be underlying intuitive judgments in human contingency learning. However, this hypothesis has been seriously questioned by a more cognitive account based on inferential reasoning (see Shanks, 2010 for a review). A prediction derived from the associative hypothesis, probably not sufficiently tested, is that knowledge retrieval must be fast and derived from a spreading activation mechanism. Thus, associative processes may not only be underlying intuitive judgments but also individuals’ performance in tasks where a rapid response must be executed, after allowing little time to stimulus processing. Using a cued-response task as well as an associative repetition priming task, the experiments reported showed the implication of fast memory retrieval processes in interference and blocking phenomena. Additionally, the implications of these results for the associative-cognitive debate are discussed.