Learning of cue-outcome relationships in associative learning experiments is often assessed by presenting cues without feedback about the outcome and informing participants to expect no outcomes to occur. The rationale is that this "no-feedback" testing procedure prevents new learning during testing that might contaminate the later test trials. We tested this assumption in 4 predictive learning experiments where participants were tasked with learning which foods (cues) were causing allergic reactions (the outcome) in a fictitious patient. We found that withholding feedback in a block of trials had no effect on causal ratings (Experiments 1 and 2), but it led to regression toward intermediate ratings when the missing feedback was embedded in the causal scenario and information about the outcome replaced by a "?" (Experiment 3). A factorial experiment manipulating cover story and feedback revealed that the regression-to-baseline effect was primarily driven by presentation of the "?" feedback (Experiment 4). We conclude that the procedure of testing without feedback, used widely in studies of human cognition, is an appropriate way of assessing learning, as long as the missing data are attributed to the experimenter and the absence of feedback is not highlighted in a way that induces uncertainty. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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非反应性测试：评估在预测性学习中保留反馈的效果。

在联想学习实验中，提示-结果关系的学习通常通过在没有结果反馈的情况下提供提示并告知参与者预期不会发生结果来评估。基本原理是这种“无反馈”测试程序可以防止在测试过程中可能会污染以后的测试试验的新学习。我们在 4 个预测性学习实验中测试了这一假设，参与者的任务是了解哪些食物（线索）会导致虚构患者的过敏反应（结果）。我们发现，在一组试验中保留反馈对因果评级没有影响（实验 1 和 2），但是当缺失的反馈嵌入到因果场景中并且有关结果的信息被替换为“ ？” （实验 3）。一项操纵封面故事和反馈的阶乘实验表明，回归基线效应主要是由“？”的呈现驱动的。反馈（实验 4）。我们得出的结论是，在人类认知研究中广泛使用的无反馈测试程序是评估学习的适当方式，只要缺失的数据归因于实验者并且没有以诱导的方式强调缺乏反馈不确定。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。是评估学习的适当方式，只要缺失的数据归因于实验者并且没有以引起不确定性的方式突出反馈的缺失。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。是评估学习的适当方式，只要缺失的数据归因于实验者并且没有以引起不确定性的方式突出反馈的缺失。（PsycInfo 数据库记录 (c) 2022 APA，保留所有权利）。