Effects of trial order and differential conditioning on acquisition of differential shock expectancy and skin conductance conditioning to masked stimuli

Research suggests that when people are fear conditioned to masked spiders and snakes (electric shocks are contingent on only spiders or snakes), they acquire a conditional skin conductance response and can predict the occurrence of shocks even though they are unable to identify the masked spiders and snakes. Because in prior studies trial order was not completely random, it is unclear if findings were due to the contingencies from differential conditioning or a restricted trial order or both. When participants were assigned to four groups to disentangle effects of trial order and differential conditioning to masked pictures in acquisition, effects were obtained only for trial order. These findings demonstrate that trial order can result in conditioning. However, because effects were observed even for participants who reported unawareness of the contingency from trial order, results are consistent with the notion of hunches or gut feelings.