Long-term Contingency Learning Depends on Contingency Awareness

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

doi:10.5334/joc.433

Long-term Contingency Learning Depends on Contingency Awareness

Journal of Cognition

Volume 8 (2025): Issue 1

By: Klaus Rothermund , Lennart Kapinos, Jan De Houwer and James R. Schmidt

Open Access

|Feb 2025

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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Articles in this issue

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/joc.433 | Journal eISSN: 2514-4820

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Language: English

Submitted on: Nov 9, 2024

Accepted on: Jan 31, 2025

Published on: Feb 11, 2025

Published by: Ubiquity Press

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Publication frequency: 1 issue per year

Keywords:

Contingency learning,

episodic response retrieval,

stimulus-response binding,

law of recency,

contingency awareness,

propositional knowledge

© 2025 Klaus Rothermund, Lennart Kapinos, Jan De Houwer, James R. Schmidt, published by Ubiquity Press
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 8 (2025): Issue 1