Long-term Contingency Learning Depends on Contingency Awareness

Klaus Rothermund; Lennart Kapinos; Jan De Houwer; James R. Schmidt

doi:10.5334/joc.433

Abstract

We examined long-term contingency learning (CL) in a color classification task with two separate sets of non-overlapping color-word contingencies that were employed in alternating blocks of the task (“alternating blocks paradigm”). Analyzing only the first occurrences of the word distractors in each block provides a pure indicator of long-term CL that is free from recency-based episodic retrieval processes. A high-powered (n = 110), pre-registered study revealed evidence for reliable long-term color-word CL. This long-term CL effect depended on contingency awareness, indicating that genuine long-term CL is influenced by propositional knowledge.

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Long-term Contingency Learning Depends on Contingency Awareness

Abstract

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