Spontaneous recovery from interference between cues but not from backward blocking

Abstract

In the present study, we examined the differential effect on backward blocking (BB) and on interference between cues (IbC) of including a delay right before the test phase vs. between training phases 1 and 2 in humans. While models of IbC predict a spontaneous recovery (SR) of responding if the delay is placed immediately before the test instead of between phases 1 and 2, BB models predict that no difference should be observed due to the position of the delay. In our experiment, we obtained the SR from IbC but not from BB. These results suggest that backward blocking and interference between cues are likely to be the result of different processes.