All Outputs (14)

Safety signals reinforce instrumental avoidance in humans (2024)
Journal Article
Fisher, C. T. L., & Urcelay, G. (in press). Safety signals reinforce instrumental avoidance in humans. Learning and Memory,

Safety signals reinforce instrumental avoidance behavior in non-human animals. However, there are no conclusive demonstrations of this phenomenon in humans. Using human participants in an avoidance task, Experiments 1-3 and 5 were conducted online to... Read More about Safety signals reinforce instrumental avoidance in humans.

A psychological mechanism for the development of anxiety (2024)
Journal Article
Urcelay, G. P. (in press). A psychological mechanism for the development of anxiety. Behavioral Neuroscience,

Although numerous behavioural constructs have been proposed to account for anxiety disorders, how these develop within an individual has been difficult to predict. In this perspective, I selectively review clinical and experimental evidence suggestin... Read More about A psychological mechanism for the development of anxiety.

Propranolol attenuates the establishment of conditioned context aversions: differential effects compared to MK-801 in an animal model of anticipatory nausea and vomiting (2024)
Journal Article
İlhan, Ç. F., Ülke, E., Urcelay, G. P., & Kişlal, S. (2024). Propranolol attenuates the establishment of conditioned context aversions: differential effects compared to MK-801 in an animal model of anticipatory nausea and vomiting. Behavioural Pharmacology, 35(5), 293–302. https://doi.org/10.1097/fbp.0000000000000779

Cancer patients often experience anticipatory nausea and vomiting (ANV) due to Pavlovian conditioning. Both N-methyl-D-aspartate and beta-adrenergic receptors are known to mediate memory formation, but their role in the development of ANV remains unc... Read More about Propranolol attenuates the establishment of conditioned context aversions: differential effects compared to MK-801 in an animal model of anticipatory nausea and vomiting.

Renewal of instrumental avoidance in humans (2024)
Journal Article
Urcelay, G. P., Symmons, K., Amos, B., Toutounji, H., & Prével, A. (in press). Renewal of instrumental avoidance in humans. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition,

The ABA renewal effect occurs when behaviour is trained in one context (A), extinguished in a second context (B), and test occurs in the training context (A). Two mechanisms that explain ABA renewal are context summation at test and contextual modula... Read More about Renewal of instrumental avoidance in humans.

The impact of emotional valence on generalization gradients (2024)
Journal Article
Alcalá, J. A., Martínez-Tomás, C., Urcelay, G. P., & Hinojosa, J. A. (2024). The impact of emotional valence on generalization gradients. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-023-02450-8

Generalization enables individuals to respond to novel stimuli based on previous experiences. The degree to which organisms respond is determined by their physical resemblance to the original conditioned stimulus (CS+), with a stronger response elici... Read More about The impact of emotional valence on generalization gradients.

The effects of goal–landmark distance on overshadowing: A replication in humans (Homo sapiens) of Goodyear and Kamil (2004). (2023)
Journal Article
Herrera, E., Austen, J. M., & Urcelay, G. P. (2024). The effects of goal–landmark distance on overshadowing: A replication in humans (Homo sapiens) of Goodyear and Kamil (2004). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 138(2), 108-117. https://doi.org/10.1037/com0000362

Goodyear and Kamil (2004) assessed the ability of Clark’s nutcrackers to find buried food based on a cross-shaped array of landmarks at different distances from the goal. Their findings suggested that proximal landmarks overshadowed learning about di... Read More about The effects of goal–landmark distance on overshadowing: A replication in humans (Homo sapiens) of Goodyear and Kamil (2004)..

Further evidence for the role of temporal contiguity as a determinant of overshadowing (2023)
Journal Article
Alcalá, J. A., Ogallar, P. M., Prados, J., & Urcelay, G. P. (2024). Further evidence for the role of temporal contiguity as a determinant of overshadowing. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 77(7), 1375-1389. https://doi.org/10.1177/17470218231197170

Three experiments explored whether weakening temporal contiguity between auditory cues and an aversive outcome attenuated cue competition in an avoidance learning task with human participants. Overall, with strong temporal contiguity between auditory... Read More about Further evidence for the role of temporal contiguity as a determinant of overshadowing.

Category relevance attenuates overshadowing in human predictive learning. (2023)
Journal Article
Alcalá, J. A., Prados, J., & Urcelay, G. P. (2023). Category relevance attenuates overshadowing in human predictive learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 49(3), 162-178. https://doi.org/10.1037/xan0000357

In situations in which multiple predictors anticipate the presence or absence of an outcome, cues compete to anticipate the outcome, resulting in a loss of associative strength compared to control conditions without additional cues. Critically, there... Read More about Category relevance attenuates overshadowing in human predictive learning..

Genetic and environmental influences on one-trial conditioned context aversion in mice (2023)
Journal Article
İlhan, Ç. F., Urcelay, G. P., & Kışlal, S. (2023). Genetic and environmental influences on one-trial conditioned context aversion in mice. Genes, Brain and Behavior, Article e12857. https://doi.org/10.1111/gbb.12857

Anticipatory nausea (AN) is caused by an association between contextual cues and the experience of nausea (the side effects of chemotherapy or radiation treatment) and it develops predominantly in female patients undergoing chemotherapy. Preclinical... Read More about Genetic and environmental influences on one-trial conditioned context aversion in mice.

Conditioned place avoidance in the planaria Schmidtea mediterranea: A pre-clinical invertebrate model of anxiety-related disorders (2023)
Journal Article
Jordan, L., Alcalá, J. A., Urcelay, G. P., & Prados, J. (2023). Conditioned place avoidance in the planaria Schmidtea mediterranea: A pre-clinical invertebrate model of anxiety-related disorders. Behavioural Processes, 210, Article 104894. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2023.104894

The objective of the present study was to develop a model of avoidance learning and its extinction in planarians (Schmidtea mediterranea). Based on previous experiments showing conditioned place preference, we developed a procedure to investigate con... Read More about Conditioned place avoidance in the planaria Schmidtea mediterranea: A pre-clinical invertebrate model of anxiety-related disorders.

Contiguity and overshadowing interactions in the rapid-streaming procedure (2023)
Journal Article
Alcalá, J. A., Miller, R. R., Kirkden, R. D., & Urcelay, G. P. (2023). Contiguity and overshadowing interactions in the rapid-streaming procedure. Learning and Behavior, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13420-023-00582-4

When multiple cues are associated with the same outcome, organisms tend to select between the cues, with one revealing greater behavioral control at the expense of the others (i.e., cue competition). However, non-human and human studies have not alwa... Read More about Contiguity and overshadowing interactions in the rapid-streaming procedure.

Social overshadowing: Revisiting cue-competition in social interactions (2023)
Journal Article
Telga, M., Alcalá, J. A., Heyes, C., & Urcelay, G. P. (2023). Social overshadowing: Revisiting cue-competition in social interactions. Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-022-02229-3

In a large variety of contexts, it is essential to use the available information to extract patterns and behave accordingly. When it comes to social interactions for instance, the information gathered about interaction partners across multiple encoun... Read More about Social overshadowing: Revisiting cue-competition in social interactions.

Signal detection analysis of contingency assessment: Associative interference and nonreinforcement impact cue-outcome contingency sensitivity, whereas cue density affects bias (2022)
Journal Article
Jozefowiez, J., Urcelay, G. P., & Miller, R. R. (2022). Signal detection analysis of contingency assessment: Associative interference and nonreinforcement impact cue-outcome contingency sensitivity, whereas cue density affects bias. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition, 48(3), 190-202. https://doi.org/10.1037/xan0000334

In a signal detection theory approach to associative learning, the perceived (i.e., subjective) contingency between a cue and an outcome is a random variable drawn from a Gaussian distribution. At the end of the sequence, participants report a positi... Read More about Signal detection analysis of contingency assessment: Associative interference and nonreinforcement impact cue-outcome contingency sensitivity, whereas cue density affects bias.

Fear memory modulation by incentive down and up-shifts (2022)
Journal Article
Mugnaini, M., Alfei, J. M., Bueno, A. M., Ferrer Monti, R. I., & Urcelay, G. P. (2022). Fear memory modulation by incentive down and up-shifts. Behavioural Brain Research, 422, Article 113766. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbr.2022.113766

Research on retrieval-induced malleability of maladaptive emotional memories has been mostly focused on the effect of drugs and extinction (i.e. post-retrieval extinction). Only a few studies addressed post-retrieval appetitive-aversive interactions.... Read More about Fear memory modulation by incentive down and up-shifts.