Supplementary Files
Keywords
context learning
context-specificity
How to Cite
Abstract
Wagner (1978) proposed that habituation, defined as a decrease in respondin to a repeated stimulus, would depend on the formation of an association between the stimulus and the context. According to this approach, habituation should be context-specific; that is, a response that was habituated in a given context should dishabituate when the stimulus is presented in a novel context. This hypothesis was examined in an experiment in which a group of students received a habituation session consisting of 60 repetitions of a stimulus capable of evoking eyeblink and heart-rate acceleration reactions. Subsequently, in a testing session the amplitude of these responses was examined by presenting the stimulus in the same context used in the habituation session (Group Same) or in an alternative context (Group Different). The results provided evidence of differential context-specificity for the two responses, since the heart-rate acceleration response was diminished in the group same but not in the group different (revealing specificity), while the eyeblink response was diminished in both groups (revealing no specificity). These findings are consistent with previous observations in rats demonstrating that the contextual control of habituation depends on the nature of the measured response.This journal is registered under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License. Thus, this work may be reproduced, distributed, and publicly shared in digital format, as long as the names of the authors and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana are acknowledged. Others are allowed to quote, adapt, transform, auto-archive, republish, and create based on this material, for any purpose (even commercial ones), provided the authorship is duly acknowledged, a link to the original work is provided, and it is specified if changes have been made. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana does not hold the rights of published works and the authors are solely responsible for the contents of their works; they keep the moral, intellectual, privacy, and publicity rights. Approving the intervention of the work (review, copy-editing, translation, layout) and the following outreach, are granted through an use license and not through an assignment of rights. This means the journal and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana cannot be held responsible for any ethical malpractice by the authors. As a consequence of the protection granted by the use license, the journal is not required to publish recantations or modify information already published, unless the errata stems from the editorial management process. Publishing contents in this journal does not generate royalties for contributors.