Saving the Perruchet effect: A role for the strength of the association in associative learning

In a partial reinforcement schedule where a cue repeatedly predicts the occurrence of a target in consecutive trials, reaction times to the target tend to decrease in a monotonic fashion, while participants’ expectancies for the target decrease at the same time. This dissociation between reaction times and expectancies—the so-called Perruchet effect—challenges the propositional view of learning, which posits that human conditioned responses result from conscious inferences about the relationships between events. However, whether the reaction time pattern reflects the strength of a putative cue-target link, or only non-associative processes, such as motor priming, remains unclear. To address this issue, we implemented the Perruchet procedure in a two-choice reaction time task and compared reaction time patterns in an Experimental condition, in which a tone systematically preceded a visual target, and in a Control condition, in which the onset of the two stimuli were uncoupled. Participants’ expectancies re...