Feasibility of unconscious instrumental conditioning: A registered replication
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The extent to which high-level, complex functions can proceed unconsciously has been a topic of considerable debate. While unconscious processing has been demonstrated for a range of low-level processes, from feature integration to simple forms of conditioning and learning, theoretical contributions suggest that increasing complexity requires conscious access. Here, we focus our attention on instrumental conditioning, which has been previously shown to proceed without stimulus awareness. Yet, instrumental conditioning also involves integrating information over a large temporal scale and distinct modalities in order to deploy selective action, constituting a process of substantial complexity. With this in mind, we revisit the question of feasibility of instrumental conditioning in the unconscious domain. Firstly, we address the theoretical and practical considerations relevant to unconscious learning in general. Secondly, we aim to replicate the first study to show instrumental conditioning in the absence of stimulus awareness (Pessiglione et al., 2008), following the original design and supplementing the original crucial analyses with a Bayesian approach (Experiment 1). We found that apparent unconscious learning took place when replicating the original methods directly and according to the tests of awareness used. However, we could not establish that the full sample was unaware in a separate awareness check. We therefore attempted to replicate the effect yet again with improved methods to address the issues related to sensitivity and immediacy (Experiment 2), including an individual threshold-setting task and a trial-by-trial awareness check permitting exclusion of individual aware trials. Here, we found evidence for absence of unconscious learning. This result provides evidence that instrumental conditioning did not occur without stimulus awareness in this paradigm, supporting the view that complex forms of learning may rely on conscious access. Our results provides support for the proposal that perceptual consciousness may be necessary for complex, flexible processes, especially where selective action and behavioural adaptation are required.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.033 | 0.143 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".