Interference with judgments of control and attentional shift as a result of prior exposure to...

Learning and Motivation 38 (2007) 229–241

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Interference with judgments of control and attentional shift as a result of prior exposure to

controllable and uncontrollable feedback

Phil Reed ¤, Marina Antonova

Department of Psychology, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK

Received 6 June 2006; received in revised form 30 August 2006, and accepted 31 August 2006Available online 19 October 2006

Abstract

The experiment was carried out to determine whether exposure to an uncontrollable relationshipbetween an action and its outcome during a non-aversive pretreatment phase would aVect subse-quent ratings of perceived control emitted by human participants. Its other aim was to investigate theeVect of such pre-exposure on the attentional focus of humans on internal and external cues. Partici-pants were assigned to one of three groups; an uncontrollable pretreatment, a controllable pretreat-ment, and no pretreatment. Participants exposed to uncontrollable outcomes (unsolvable problems)gave lower ratings of control over a produced outcome than the other two groups, indicating theinterference with subsequent judgments of control. The exposure to uncontrollable outcomes alsoincreased levels of distraction produced by an external cue in a reaction time experiment. Such aneVect was not found in the groups who had not been exposed to uncontrollable outcomes. These dualeVects are similar to those noted in non-humans subjected to uncontrollable outcomes.© 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Learned helplessness; Judgement of control; Attention; Humans

Ovennier and Seligman (1967) demonstrated that dogs exposed to inescapable shocksshowed retarded subsequent escape-avoidance responding. In this study, dogs were ran-domly assigned to one of four groups. Three of these groups received exposure to unsig-naled inescapable shocks of diVerent lengths. The remaining group did not receive such a

* Corresponding author. Fax: +017920 295679.E-mail address: [email protected] (P. Reed).

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230 P. Reed, M. Antonova / Learning and Motivation 38 (2007) 229–241

treatment. Approximately 24 h after the shock exposure treatment, all four groups receivedten trials of instrumental escape-avoidance training. All the participants could escape theshock by jumping a barrier between the compartments in a two-compartment shuttle box.The three groups that had been exposed to inescapable shocks were slower in their escape-avoidance responses than the remaining group that had not previously been exposed toinescapable shock. Similar interference with learning as a result of exposure to uncontrol-lable outcomes has been demonstrated in a variety of species (see Eisenstein & Carlson,1997, for a review), including humans (e.g., Chaney et al., 1999; Hiroto & Seligman, 1975;Maldonado, Martos, & Ramirez, 1991; Reed, Frasquillo, Colkin, Leimann, & Colbert,2001).

A series of experiments by Minor, Jackson, and Maier (1984) suggested several possibleexplanations for this eVect. Minor et al. (1984) explored the deWcit produced by prior ines-capable shock on escape learning in a Y-maze. They found that this deWcit appeared reli-ably only when there was both a short delay of shock termination following a correctchoice, and when an irrelevant cue was present during the delay. The term “irrelevant cue”was used to refer to a cue that, if used to guide behavior, could not lead to a problem solu-tion. Moreover, the irrelevant cue eVect was more potent than that of the delay. Accordingto Minor et al. (1984), the potent eVect of the irrelevant cues suggested a number of atten-tional hypotheses for the genesis of learned helplessness. For example, it may be that ines-capably shocked participants are more fearful or aroused during subsequent testing thanare the previously escapably shocked or non-shocked participants (Minor & LoLordo,1984). High arousal might decrease the breadth of attention (Easterbrook, 1959), or reducethe organism’s ability to switch attention from salient but task irrelevant cues, to relevantcues (Hamilton, Hockey, & Rejrnan, 1977).

Minor et al. (1984) also pointed to a somewhat diVerent attentional possibility; that is,inescapably shocked participants might be less likely to attend to their own behavior, or tocues associated with this behavior, in the test task. They suggested that inescapable shockbiases the participants’ attention away from internal response-related cues, so that inescap-ably shocked animals are more likely than other participants to attend to external cues.Whatever the explanation for the increased eVectiveness of external cues, it is an eVect thathas been noted cross species (see Rodd, Rosellini, Stock, & Gallup, 1997).

Lee and Maier (1988) further investigated this eVect in a discrimination task in a watermaze. The escape latencies of rats were measured following exposure either to escapable,yoked-inescapable shock, or no shock. Inescapable shock interfered with subsequentacquisition of an internally related response cue (a left–right discrimination), but onlywhen an irrelevant external cue (a black-white card stimulus) was present on those trials.Inescapably shocked rats apparently were attentionally inXuenced by the external black-white cues. When the latter cue was used as the relevant dimension leading to successfulescape, and position was irrelevant, the inescapably shocked animals showed facilitation inlearning, relative to the escapably shocked and non-shocked participants. These resultssuggest that there was not a learning deWcit per se in the inescapably shocked rats, butrather that their performance depended on whether the external cues were relevant or irrel-evant to the solution of the discrimination problem; the former condition leading to facili-tation of the discrimination, and the latter to attenuation of learning the discrimination.

The aim of the present experiment is to extend the exploration of learned helplessnessin humans. Prior exposure to an unsolvable task has been shown to reduce subsequentjudgments of causal eVectiveness in humans (Maldonado et al., 1991) and impair their

P. Reed, M. Antonova / Learning and Motivation 38 (2007) 229–241 231

ability to learn a route through a maze (Reed et al., 2001). The current experiment exam-ined whether prior exposure to uncontrollable outcomes (unsolvable problems) wouldinduce biases in human attentional responses, as were reported for rats by Lee andMaier (1988). In order to assess this possibility, a choice reaction time task was pre-sented to the participants. If such prior exposure biases attention in similar ways inhumans and non-humans, then it might be expected that an incongruent distracter stim-ulus, presented along with the target, should slow the response reaction times of partici-pants exposed previously to an unsolvable task more than it would slow the reactions ofparticipants not exposed to the unsolvable task. However, if the target and distracterstimuli are the same, then the distracter might facilitate the response reaction times ofthe participants exposed to uncontrollable outcomes compared to those participantswho did not receive the prior unsolvable task.

In addition to the experimental task, the participants were also presented with two psy-chometric instruments. Beck’s Depression Inventory was used to screen for pre-existingdepression in the participants. The existence of depression in the participants prior toexposure to the experimental manipulations of uncontrollable feedback might allow thesuggestion that this pre-existing state, rather than the manipulation, lead to any behavioraloutcomes noted in the study. The participants were also asked to complete the Adult Now-icki–Strickland Internal–External Control Scale. This scale attempts to assess the degree towhich the occurrence of events is attributed to either external or internal sources of con-trol. This scale was used in an attempt to gain a further measure of the impact of exposureto uncontrollable events on such judgments. If the previous results with non-human sub-jects were to be replicated, it might be expected that the participants exposed to the uncon-trollable feedback would show higher scores on the scale, reXecting greater judgments ofexternal control of events.

Method

Participants

Thirty-six volunteers were tested in the experiment and were randomly assigned toone of three groups. Six of these participants were discarded from the study due to themshowing some signs of depression (i.e., their scores on a Beck’s Depression Inventory[BDI] were 9 or higher), these participants were excluded in order to rule out the possibleconfounding eVects of pre-existing depression. The remaining participants were agedbetween 19 and 29, with mean age of 23. Twenty females and ten males took part in theexperiment. All participants were recruited in the Department of Psychology, UniversityCollege London, but none was a psychology student, and all were naive to the purposeof the study.

Apparatus and materials

Participants were tested using an Elonex, PC compatible (100%) computer, with a SuperVideo Graphics Adapter card monitor to present the instructions and stimuli. A standardIBM keyboard received the participants’ responses. The instructions, display presenta-tions, condition randomization, and recording of participants’ responses were all imple-mented using Borlands Turbo Pascal programming language (V.6.1).


Beck’s Depression Inventory (BDI)The BDI (Beck, Ward, Henderson, Lock, & Erbaugh, 1961) is a self-report measure for

examining the presence and severity of depression. The scale is composed of 21 statements.Participants rate their own current status relative to each of the statements. Current statusis assessed in terms of how the participant has felt in the week up to, and including, the dayof the test administration.

Each statement has an associated numerical value (zero to three). These values aresummed for all statements to give an overall BDI score. The obtained BDI scores arecompared with the following ratings, to determine the presence and estimated level ofdepression in the participant: 0–9Dnormal non-depressed range; 10–15Dmild depression;16–19Dmild to moderate depression; 20–29Dmoderate to severe depression; and30–63D severe depression. The test has proven eVective in revealing depressive mood innon-clinical populations, and has been in widespread use in a variety of contexts. Onlydata from participants with BDI scores of nine or less (i.e., participants in the non-depressed category) were employed in the study.

Pretreatment: Levine concept learning discrimination taskThe solvable and insolvable discrimination tasks used the same stimuli. These con-

sisted of pairs of patterns, which could vary along four dimensions and which were simi-lar to those used by Hiroto and Seligman (1975); based on a discrimination taskdesigned by (Levine, 1971). Each pattern consisted of a letter (A or T), which was col-ored (yellow or blue), of a particular type (capital or lower case), and which had a border(circle or square). The borders were drawn in white, and the background was light greythroughout the pretreatment condition. Each pattern measured approximately 5 cm highand 5 cm wide.

The patterns were displayed in pairs, in the central portion of the monitor, one on theleft of the screen and the other on the right of the screen, separated by 7.5 cm. The pairsconsisted of one ‘base’ pattern (composed of one setting value for each of the four dimen-sions), and a complementary pattern (containing the other dimensional settings). Eachpair, therefore, contained mutually exclusive, and jointly exhaustive, dimensional settings.For example, if one of the stimuli used was a yellow, capital A, in a circle, then the otherstimulus presented in the pair would be a blue, lower-case t, in a square. The solvable andinsolvable task procedures were each composed of three sets of ten problem trials (pairs ofpatterns), making a total of thirty stimulus displays (all had the same solution). Displaypairs were allocated to each problem on a random basis.

Feedback on the discrimination task was presented on the screen by the appearance ofeither a smiling green happy face for ’correct’ selections, or a sad red face for ’incorrect’selections. The nature of the feedback given to the participant was determined in relationto whether the task was solvable or insolvable.

Attention taskThis was a simple choice reaction time task, in which a participant had to decide

whether a stimulus presented centrally on the screen, on each trial, was a square or a circle.The square measured 6 cm by 6 cm, and the circle had a 6 cm diameter. Responses weremade by pressing either the “S” or the “C” key on the keyboard, and the reaction times,and number of errors, were recorded. This task had three types of trial, which were pre-sented to the participants in a random order, and which manipulated the congruency of a


distracter cue. The distracter was either a circle or a square, and was smaller in size (asquare 4 cm by 4 cm, or a circle 4 cm in diameter) to the main stimulus and was presented atone of the four corners of the screen simultaneously with the target stimulus. In one condi-tion, the distracter was incongruent to the target (i.e., a square distracter with a circle tar-get, and vice versa). In a second condition, the distracter was congruent with the target (i.e.,a square distracter with a square target, and a circle distracter with a circle target). The lastcondition did not present a distracter. The participants were given 60 trials, randomizedacross the three main trial types (in half of these the circle was the target and in the otherhalf the square served as the target). All of the stimuli were presented in purple on a blackbackground.

Free-operant judgment of control taskParticipants were allowed to press the space bar freely, and these space bar responses

were logged immediately after the response. The contingency judgment task lasted untilforty responses had been made. The designated outcome was the appearance of a large,round, green smiling face in the centre of a grey screen which remained visible for 750ms.The keyboard number pad was used to log judgments of control, using a scale of zero(no control) to one hundred (complete control).

The Adult Nowicki–Strickland internal–external control scale (ANSIE)The ANSIE (Nowicki & Duke, 1974) assesses locus of control as a generalized expec-

tancy of control. It is a 40 item self-administered questionnaire requiring either yes/noresponses, and is an extension of the children’s Nowicki–Strickland internal–externalscale made more appropriate for adult populations. Scale questions include items suchas: “Do you feel that one of the best ways to handle most problems is just not to think aboutthem?”, and “Do you think it’s better to be smart than to be lucky?” Overall scores aresimply the number of ‘yes’ responses given by each participant, and this indicates thedegree of ‘externality’ they perceive in their control of an event’s occurrence. Scores canrange from 0 (internal) to 40 (external), where a higher score indicates a more externallocus of control. In terms of reliability, it has been shown to have up to a 0.86 split-halfreliability (Lefcourt, 1991).

Procedure

Participants were taken to the experimental room and were given the BDI to complete.All participants were told to read the instructions on the BDI questionnaire beforeattempting to answer the questions. Participants were also told that their answers would betreated conWdentially, and that they were not to place any identifying marks (e.g., name,comments, etc.) on the questionnaire. While participants were completing the BDI, theexperimenter randomly allocated the participant to one of the three groups (Group Insolv-able, Group Solvable, and Group Naive).

The participants were then directed to a chair, in front of which was a computer key-board and monitor. The keyboard was placed within comfortable reach of participant’shands, with the monitor approximately Wfteen inches from the participant’s face. The par-ticipant was instructed that all necessary instructions would appear on the screen, and ifany problem arose in interpreting or understanding the instructions, then the experimenterwould help.


Before commencing the experiment proper, the participants were given a quick colorperception task, involving naming colored blocks on the screen. Yellow, blue, red, andgreen blocks appeared on the screen, and the experimenter asked participants to namethem. This was done in order to test the participants’ color perception for stimuli appear-ing in the experiments and to accustom participants to watching stimuli on screen. Aftersuccessful completion of the color perception task (all participants correctly identiWed thecolors), the experimenter pressed the experimental invitation key, and a set of generalinstructions appeared on screen. Participants were given four sets of instructions through-out the experiment: a general set of instructions, instructions for the concept learning task,instructions for the attentional task, and instructions for the free-operant judgment of con-trol task.

The general instructions explained that all the stimuli would appear on screen, and thatthe participants were expected to answer any questions using the keyboard. The partici-pants were informed that they could rest between each of the problems presented, and thatthey determined when to start the next set of tasks. The instructions emphasized the needfor careful reading and understanding of subsequent instructions. Participants could pressa key on the key board to be given the next set of instructions.

Following these general instructions, the participants in Group Insolvable and GroupSolvable were then given the Levine concept learning task. These participants were giventhe following instructions for the concept learning task on screen, with two example pat-terns presented:

“You will be shown pattern displays like the one below. Each display will have two pat-terns, one on the left and one on the right, similar to our example. Each pattern basi-cally consists of a coloured (Yellow or blue) letter (A or T) that may be large or small,surrounded by a square or circular border. Each pattern is therefore composed of fourdiVerent dimensions. Each dimension can vary along two associated values (letter type:A/T, letter colour: yellow blue, letter size: capital/lower case, and border type: circlesquare). Press any key for to be given more information on your task.”

Upon pressing any key, participants were given the next set of instructions:

“I have arbitrarily selected one target value from the possibilities described above. Yourtask is to select which pattern in each pair contains my target value. You may select pat-terns in each display by pressing the “Q” key for left side pattern, and the “P” key forright side patterns. Correct selections (where target value is present in selected pattern)lead to the appearance of a happy green face, while incorrect selection (selections wheretarget value is not present) lead to a sad red face. Use the feedback on your selections todetermine my target value, and thereby select correct patterns as often as possible.After each selection made there is a short delay before new patterns appear. Wait untilnew patterns appear before responding, do not anticipate. You have 15 s to make aselection once new patterns appear, the experimenter will direct you to select after 10 s,you then have 5 s left to make a selection. You will be given three separate problems (A,B, and C) each composed of ten displays or trials. After each problem you will be askedfor the target value for that particular problem. If you are confused about anything askabout it now, otherwise press any key to recap on the problem and task details.”

After reading through these instructions, the participants were given examples of the stim-ulus dimensions and their associated values, as well as a brief summary of the aim of this task.


After reading the task summary, the participants were requested to re-describe the task intheir own words to ensure that they had understood the aim of the concept learning task.

All participants were Wrst given four pilot trials. The practice trials consisted of fourpairs of patterns, displayed on the screen one pair at a time, with new patterns appearingafter a selection had been made, and the appropriate feedback given. ’Correct’ feedbackwas given for patterns with circular borders, and all such stimuli also contained the letter“T”, allowing for two possible concepts to have been operating during the pilot trials.Throughout the subsequent thirty trials, participants used the ‘Q’ key to select patterns dis-played on the left of the screen, and the ‘P’ key to select patterns on the right of the screen.In all tasks, feedback was given in terms of either a happy green face to indicate a ‘correct’selection, or a sad red face to indicate an ’incorrect’ feedback. Faces appeared on the screendirectly above the stimulus selected by a participant. The faces remained on the screen for2 s. The new pattern pairs always appeared immediately after the feedback face had disap-peared. All participants had 15 s to make a response during each pattern pair, which wastimed by the experimenter, with a warning being given after 10 s had elapsed.

Participants were given either solvable or insolvable versions of the task, depending on theirgroup allocation. The pretreatment involved presenting participants with three sets of ten trials(as were presented by Maldonado et al., 1991; Reed et al., 2001). A trial consisted of a pair ofpatterns, as described above, and the participants had to select the pattern that they thoughtcontained the target value. Feedback was given immediately after each selection. Presentationof the ’correct’ patterns was counterbalanced between the pattern appearing on the left andright of the screen. At the end of each set of ten problem trials, in either the solvable or insolv-able group, the experimenter asked participants what they thought the target value was.

The solvable tasks had one dimensional setting as ‘correct’ (or ‘target’) for all of theproblems. The circular border was always the correct dimensional setting. Participantsselecting the patterns that contained a circular border were, therefore, presented with ‘cor-rect’ feedback. When the experimenter asked participants what they thought the targetvalue was, the circular border was the correct answer. Only participants who obtainedthree correct answers (one after each set of ten trials) were included in subsequent analysisfor the solvable group (all participants produced the correct answer).

The insolvable problems utilized an identical set of stimuli as in the above solvable task,in terms of the patterns presented, but for this group there were no ’correct’ values. Thesequence of feedback that participants in the insolvable group received was determinedusing one of the following schedules (Hiroto & Seligman, 1975): I-C-I-C-C-I-C-I-C-I; orC-I-I-C-C-I-I-C-C-I; or I-C-I-C-I-C-C-I-C-I; where: IDa sad face, and CD a happy face.The participants in this group received the scheduled feedback irrespective of the patternthat they had selected. On the completion of each set of ten problems, the participants wereasked to give a target value. Whatever answer the participants gave, the experimenterwould say: “That is the incorrect answer”. Of course, no correct answer was possible, andthe random feedback ensured that no one dimensional setting was consistently correct.

The next phase of the task for all three groups was the attentional task. The participantswere presented with the following instructions:

“On each trial you will be presented with either a circle or a square in the centre of thescreen. Your task is to press ‘C’ if this is a circle, and ‘S’ if it is a square, as quickly andaccurately as you can. Ignore all other stimuli that are not in the centre of the screen. Ifyou have any questions, please ask now. If not, press any key to begin.”


After completion of the attentional problems, all participants were given new instruc-tions concerning the judgment of control task. These instructions were:

“You will now be asked to press the space bar of the computer. Sometimes a large,green happy face will appear on the screen. After a short time you will be asked to giveyour rating between zero and 100 of how eVective pressing the space bar was in makingthe face appear. Do not hold down the space bar, or tap the space bar too quickly, asthis will not allow you to judge the eVectiveness of pressing the space bar properly”.

All of the participants were required to re-describe the task after they had read theinstructions.

The participants were required to judge their control over the appearance of the out-come on a scale of zero to one hundred; where, one hundred indicated complete control,and zero indicated no control. The trial lasted until the participant had made 40 barpresses. When the faces did appear after key pressing, there was always a delay of 100msbetween response and the face appearance, with the face remaining on screen for 500ms.

The objective contingency between space bar pressing and face appearance was deter-mined using the dP rule (i.e., the probability of the outcome given a response minus theprobability of an outcome in the absence of a response). The probability of the faceappearing without a bar press was set to zero. The probability of a response producing anoutcome during the task was determined by computer randomization. The task had anaction–outcome contingency of 25%. The actual probabilities generated by the computervaried due to the process of randomization utilized by the programming language, so theobjective contingencies varied slightly from those expected using the dP rule. The programlogged the actual contingencies for each participant.

After each participant had completed the contingency judgment problem, they weregiven the ANSIE questionnaire to complete. Following completion of this questionnaire,the experiment was terminated. Participants were thanked for their time and weredebriefed about the nature of the experiment, with special care being taken over the partic-ipants who had been exposed to the uncontrollable/non-contingent pretreatment. Theseparticipants were told that the feedback which they had been given was random, and thattheir performance on any of these tasks had no bearing on their intellectual capacity.

Results

Judgment of control

The mean scores for judgments of control in the contingency rating problem, for each ofthe three groups, are displayed in the top panel of Fig. 1. Inspection of the mean scores sug-gests that ratings for participants in Group Insolvable were lower than those in the othertwo groups. An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed on these data, whichrevealed a signiWcant diVerence between the groups, F(2, 27)D5.29, p < 0.05. Student–New-man–Keul’s tests were conducted on these data and showed a signiWcant diVerencebetween Group Insolvable and the other two groups, ps < 0.05. However, there was nosigniWcant diVerence between the other two groups.

The bottom panel of Fig. 1 displays the levels of accuracy in judgment during thecontrol tasks, for participants in all three groups. These scores were calculated by Wndingthe diVerence between the judged and the actual contingency for each participant (as


determined by the number of outcomes produced in each task divided by 40). A zerodiVerence reXected complete accuracy, positive values indicated overestimation of con-trol, and negative values indicated underestimation of control.

Participants in Group Naive and Group Solvable tended to overestimate the contin-gency. In contrast, participants in Group Insolvable gave accurate judgments. AnANOVA conducted on these data revealed a signiWcant diVerence between the groups,F(2, 27)D 5.19, p < 0.05. Student–Newman–Keul’s tests conducted on these data showedsigniWcant diVerences between Group Insolvable and each of the other two groups,ps < 0.05. No other pairwise diVerences proved to be signiWcant.

In addition to assessing the accuracy diVerences between the three groups, the abso-lute accuracy of judgments of contingency for all groups was assessed. The accuracy ofjudgment scores were tested against a diVerence of zero (accurate judgment). For GroupNaive and Group Insolvable these scores did not diVer from zero. For Group Solvable,these accuracy scores were signiWcantly greater than zero, t(10)D 3.95, p < 0.05 .

Attentional bias

The top panel of Fig. 2 represents the mean reaction times for the three groups in thethree types of distracter trials. Inspection of these data shows that Group Insolvable had

Fig. 1. Top panel. Mean ratings of judgment of control (and standard errors) for all three groups. Bottom panel.Accuracy of control ratings for all three groups. InsolvableD uncontrollable feedback group;Solvable D controllable feedback group; Naive D no pretreatment.


longer reaction times than the other groups when the distracter and the target were incon-gruent. A two-factor ANOVA (group£distracter) revealed signiWcant main eVects ofgroup, F(2, 27)D5.30, p < 0.05, and distracter, F(2,54)D 7.59, p < 0.01. There also was a sta-tistically signiWcant interaction between the two factors, F(4, 54)D2.70, p < 0.05. The simpleeVect of group for each type of distracter was analyzed. This revealed a signiWcant eVect ofgroup at the incongruent distracter, F(2, 48)D 10.26, p < 0.01, reXecting slower reactiontimes for the uncontrollable than the other two groups. No other simple eVect of group wasfound, ps > 0.10.

The scores from the ANSIE questionnaire are displayed in the bottom panel of Fig. 2,and these reveal higher scores for Group Insolvable than for the other two groups (reXect-ing a bias toward an external locus of control). These impressions were conWrmed by anANOVA, which revealed a signiWcant diVerence between the groups, F(2, 27)D6.39,p < 0.01. Student–Newman–Keul’s tests revealed a signiWcant diVerence between GroupInsolvable and Group Solvable; no other diVerence was signiWcant.

Discussion

The present experiment examined the issue of whether previous uncontrollableexperience interferes with the subsequent detection of a positive action–outcome

Fig. 2. Top panel. Mean reactions times (and standard errors) for all three groups for each type of distracter con-dition. Bottom panel. Mean ANSIE questionnaire scores (and standard errors) for all three groups.Insolvable D uncontrollable feedback group; Solvable D controllable feedback group; NaiveD no pretreatment.


contingency (Maldonado et al., 1991; Reed et al., 2001). The present data conWrmedthat those who had been exposed to uncontrollable outcomes tended to be quite accu-rate in their judgment of the degree of action–outcome contingency. In contrast, thosewho had been exposed to the contingent feedback pretreatment tended to overesti-mate their degree of control.

This latter aspect of the result deserves comment, as it appears to demonstrate that thepresent procedure of exposure to uncontrollable outcomes enhances, rather than retards,performance. This form of increased accuracy of judgment in participants exposed touncontrollable events is sometimes found in the literature on depression and learned help-lessness (cf. Alloy & Abramson, 1979; Bryson, Doan, & Pasquali, 1984). Several studies ofdepression (although by no means all) have suggested that the retardation in performanceproduced by this form of distress is the product of an attenuation of the overestimation ofeYcacy present in non-depressed persons (i.e., ‘the self-serving bias). To the extent that thiseVect is mirrored in experiments using exposure to uncontrollable outcomes (often con-nected with the study of learned helplessness), it serves to enhance the correspondencebetween this ‘helplessness’ model and depression.

The experiment showed that interference with subsequent behaviors (judgments of con-trol) could be experimentally produced in humans in a similar manner to that noted innon-humans. However, this interference eVect was noted without the necessity to use aver-sive stimuli, as were used by Hiroto (1974) and Maldonado et al. (1991). The fact that thepresent study limited the use of aversive procedures in order to examine interference eVectsproduced by prior exposure to uncontrollable outcomes, provides some evidence that non-aversive uncontrollable stimulation can result in an interference eVect as hypothesized bySeligman (1975), and shown by Reed et al. (2001) for human participants. It has previouslyproved diYcult to establish such evidence, especially in non-humans (see Benson & Kenne-ley, 1976; Job, 1988). It should be mentioned that the pre-training stimuli employed in thepresent study cannot be considered as completely non-aversive: the feedback involved neg-ative stimulation in terms of the incorrect feedback during problem solving. However, itseems unlikely that such a feedback stimulus would have much negative hedonic value.

A further point concerning the methodology of the current study is worth noting. Thatis, the amount of positive and negative feedback delivered to the participants in the con-trollable and uncontrollable groups diVered. The participants in the uncontrollable groupreceived 50% positive, and 50% negative, feedback during the discrimination learning task.In contrast, those in the controllable group received increasing amounts of positive feed-back as they acquired the task through trial and error learning. This impact of such a dis-crepancy on judgments of control was studied by Reed et al. (2001), and it was found thatthe amount of positive and negative feedback received during the discrimination trainingdid not impact on subsequent judgments of control, but that the key diVerence between theconditions was whether the feedback was controllable or not (at least under this range ofparameters). Nevertheless, this diVerence opens up the possibility that it is exposure to theamount of negative feedback, rather than the uncontrollability of the task that impacts onattentional judgments (although this is not the case for the non-humans in previous stud-ies, e.g., Lee & Maier, 1988). This in itself would be an interesting Wnding, and worthy offurther study.

The results mentioned above are replications and extensions of several previous studies.The novel part of the current experiment was the measurement of the locus of attentionfollowing exposure to uncontrollable events in human participants. In particular, this


study investigated whether there are diVerences in attention with respect to focus on inter-nal versus external cues in humans following exposure to uncontrollable outcomes, as hasbeen shown in several experiments with non-humans (e.g., Lee & Maier, 1988; Rodd et al.,1997). It was found that humans who had been exposed to uncontrollable events weremore susceptible to distracters (i.e., had slower response reaction times with an incongruentdistracter) than participants not previously exposed to uncontrollable events in the experi-ment. This Wnding was mirrored in the results of the ANSIE questionnaire that, likewise,found a bias toward perceptions of an external locus of control following exposure touncontrollable events.

However, unlike the results produced by Lee and Maier (1988) with rats, who had foundthat inescapably shocked rats showed facilitated learning when the relevant cue was exter-nal, the human participants did not show such a pattern. In contrast, humans who hadundergone exposure to uncontrollable events became signiWcantly more distracted by irrel-evant external cues but did not show facilitation when the distracter was congruent.

There may be several possible explanations for the diVerence in the Wndings between theexperiments conducted on human and animal subjects. Firstly, the cognitive processesresponsible for attention in animals may diVer from those in humans. Alternatively,another explanation may lie in the comparison of the diVerent designs used in the studieswith humans and non-humans. In the water-discrimination task, the response measure forrats was position learning (Lee & Maier, 1988): in contrast, reaction times and self-ratingswere the response measures used in the present study with human participants. It may wellbe that reaction times are not a complete analogue of the position discrimination response.The former may well involve both cognitive and motivational factors, whereas the positiondiscrimination may reXect a more pure assay of the cognitive factors inXuenced by help-lessness induction.

There are, of course, many potential sources of the diVerence between the present studywith humans and previous studies with non-humans. However, even despite these diVer-ences, in the most important aspects, the present study conWrmed that humans display sim-ilar eVects following exposure to uncontrollable events to non-humans. The interferencewith judgments of control in humans, and the subsequent bias of attention towards exter-nal cues, were both noted. This is the Wrst demonstration of such an eVect in humans pre-exposed to uncontrollable events and suggests the attentional aspects of exposure touncontrollable events deserve some further investigation.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to Eoin Ryan and Frank Frasquillo who helped with the developmentof the program used, and to Lisa A. Osborne for her support and comments on thisresearch.

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