Facilitation of Voluntary Goal-directed Action by Reward Cue

Facilitation of Voluntary Goal-directed Action by Reward CueTITLEUsing a human fear paradigm, Lovibond et al (2013) attempted to show competition between an instrumental avoidance response and a Pavlovian safety signal for association with omission of shock. Pavlovian and instrumental conditioning are two forms of associative learning. Pavlovian conditioning involves humans learning that initially neutral conditioned stimuli (CSs), such as a tone or colour, predicts an outcome (US), such as electric shock, or in the case of safety signals, safety, such as an omission of shock. Instrumental learning refers to learning associations between voluntary responses (such as a button press, or an avoidance response) and outcomes or reinforcers, such as shock or an omission of shock.