The influence of the outcome on predictive learning
Final Report Abstract
Humans (and non-human animals) learn automatically and with little effort about relationships between events. They have evolved this capacity because knowledge about such relationships allows them to predict (and thereby control) both appetitive and aversive outcomes of other events or their own behaviour. The current project focused on an important but often overlooked component: the influence of the outcome itself on such predictive learning. In particular, the project investigated how knowledge about the prior predictability of the outcome biases future learning. After having established that such a learning bias towards predictability exists in a previous project, the current project concentrated on possible mechanisms. A first series of experiments demonstrated that learning biases are related to effects of predictability on the motivational value of the outcome. When humans are given a free choice about which outcomes to learn next, they choose outcomes that they have previously been able to successfully predict in another task. However, people are not only motivated by making as many correct predictions as possible. Interestingly, as soon as they can predict these outcomes correctly in the new task as well, they change their strategy. They then choose to learn about those outcomes for which they previously made many wrong predictions and for which they will do so in the beginning of the new tasks as well. Another experiment showed that humans also learn better about outcomes that were previously associated with a higher reward for correct predictions. On the other hand, the project found no evidence that competing knowledge, which humans acquired about the poorly predictable outcomes in the first task, blocks learning in the second task. Also, reasoning processes and higher-order inferences are not necessarily involved in the emergence of the effects.
Publications
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(2017). Learned Predictiveness and Outcome Predictability effects are not simply two sides of the same coin. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 43, 341-365
Thorwart, Anna; Livesey, Evan J.; Wilhelm, Francisco; Liu, Wei & Lachnit, Harald
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(2019). Learned biases in the processing of outcomes: A brief review of the outcome predictability effect. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 45, 1-16
Griffiths, Oren; Livesey, Evan & Thorwart, Anna
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(2020). Does learning history shape the associability of outcomes? Further tests of the outcome predictability effect. PLOS ONE, 15(12), e0243434
Liu, Wei; Livesey, Evan J.; Lachnit, Harald; Don, Hilary J. & Thorwart, Anna
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(2020). Inhibited Elements Model — Implementation of an associative learning theory. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 102310
Thorwart, Anna & Lachnit, Harald
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(2021). Outcome unpredictability affects outcome-specific motivation to learn. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28, 1648–1656
Hartanto, Genisius; Livesey, Evan; Griffiths, Oren; Lachnit, Harald & Thorwart, Anna
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(2022). The influence of outcome unpredictability and uncontrollability on subsequent learning in an instrumental task. Learning and Motivation, 77, 101781
Hartanto, Genisius & Thorwart, Anna
