Revisiting the relation between contingency awareness and attention: Evaluative conditioning relies on a contingency focus

Abstract

Although evaluative conditioning has occasionally been demonstrated in the absence of contingency awareness, many recent studies imply that its acquisition depends on the availability of attentional resources during conditioning. In previous experiments attention has typically been manipulated in a general way rather than looking at the particular focus of attention. The present study investigated the role of a focus on the CS–US contingency. Two separate distraction tasks were designed that either diverted attention from the stimuli or directed it to the stimuli while drawing attention away from the contingency between the stimuli. Both types of distraction were shown to eliminate evaluative conditioning. Significant evaluative conditioning was observed in a third group of participants who were required to attend the contingencies. A mediation analysis showed that the observed discrepancy in evaluative conditioning effects between groups was mediated by contingency awareness. The results imply that attention in terms of a stimulus focus is not sufficient for evaluative conditioning to occur. Rather, attention to the contingencies between stimuli appears to be crucial in evaluative conditioning, because it is supposed to foster the acquisition of contingency awareness.

Keywords:

• Evaluative conditioning
• Contingency awareness
• Attention
• Contingency focus
• Distraction

Notes

¹Field and Moore (2005) reported that more participants became aware of the supraliminally presented contingencies in the non-distracted group than in the distracted group. Thus the manipulation of attention may also have affected contingency awareness. Statistically, however, contingency awareness as a covariate did not affect EC. Further, if contingency awareness was crucial, then no EC would have been expected with subliminally presented USs.

²The contingency distraction group and full distraction group were pooled for this analysis since both distraction tasks were designed to reduce contingency awareness.