The effect of context change on simple acquisition disappears with increased training

ABSTRACT

The goal of this experiment was to assess the impact that experience with atask has on the context specificity of the learning that occurs. Participantsperformed an instrumental task within a computer game where differentresponses were performed in the presence of discriminative stimuli to obtainreinforcers. The number of training trials (3, 5, or 8) with eachdiscriminative stimulus varied between participants. A single test trial wasconducted in the context where training occurred or in a different butequally familiar context. The change in context attenuated performance inparticipants that received 3 training trials, but not in the others, suggestingthat the influence of context on performance decreases when trainingincreases(AU)