This repository contains code to run a devaluation task for web-based testing.
Fear-conditioning and avoidance learning task.
Task includes three phases: 1) Learning/Acquisition, 2) Avoidance response and 3) Extinction/Recall.
The task is presented with a space theme cover story. You have come onboard to help navigate the spaceship through three journeys.
Journey 1: Four planets (stimuli) are each linked to differing levels of aversive feedback probability (CS+), with two planets associated with a high probability of aversive feedback (80%) and two with a low probability of aversive feedback (20%). Participants will view a series of trials to learn these contingencies. They will then report their estimated guess of the contingencies and their confidence of their guess at the end of the phase.
Journey 2: Participants are given the choice to activate a "shield" (with the SPACEBAR key) that will protect the spaceship from aversive feedback. However, this comes at a cost - a less aversive noise will be determinstically given instead. Thus, for the low probability aversive stimuli, choosing to activate the shield is more detrimental.
Journey 3: One high and one low aversive planet is devalued to 0%. Participants are explicitly told about this. As such, choosing to activate the shield for these planets is more harmful. Participants will report their estimated guess of the contingencies at the end of the phase again.
To ensure participants are paying attention, a warning neutral tone is played on rare occurances throughout the task.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0). Feel free to use it and adapt it however you want for non-commerical purposes.
(c) 2020 Tricia Seow