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Nonconscious associative learning: Pavlovian conditioning of skin conductance responses to masked fear‐relevant facial stimuli
Author(s) -
ESTEVES FRANCISCO,
PARRA CRISTINA,
DIMBERG ULF,
ÖHMAN ARNE
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1994.tb02446.x
Subject(s) - psychology , classical conditioning , measures of conditioned emotional response , fear conditioning , associative learning , stimulus (psychology) , skin conductance , conditioning , neutral stimulus , extinction (optical mineralogy) , audiology , conditioned emotional response , neuroscience , subliminal stimuli , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , unconditioned stimulus , amygdala , stimulus control , chemistry , medicine , statistics , mathematics , biomedical engineering , nicotine , mineralogy
Abstract We examined the possibility of nonconscious associative learning in a context of skin conductance conditioning, using emotional facial expressions as stimuli. In the first experiment, subjects were conditioned to a backwardly masked angry face that was followed by electric shock, with a masked happy face as the nonreinforced stimulus. In spite of the effectively masked conditioned stimuli, differential conditioned skin conductance responses were observed in a subsequent nonmasked extinction phase. This effect could not be attributed to differential sensitization or pseudo‐conditioning. In the second experiment, the differential responding during extinction was replicated with angry but not with happy faces as conditioned stimuli. It was concluded that with fear‐relevant facialexpressions as the conditioned stimulus, associative learning was possible even in conditions where the subjects remained unaware of the conditioned stimulus, associative learning was possible even in conditions where the subjects remained unaware of the conditioned stimulus and its relationship to the unconditioned stimulus.