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Human participants were trained in a trial-by-trial contingency judgements task in which they had to predict the probability of an outcome (diarrhoea) following different cues (food names) in different contexts (restaurants). Cue P was paired with the outcome on half of the trials (partial reinforcement), while cue C was paired with the outcome on all the trials (continuous reinforcement), both cues in Context A. Test was conducted in both Context A and a different but equally familiar context (B). Context change decreased judgements to C, but not to P (Experiment 1). This effect was found only in the cue trained in the context where a different cue was partially reinforced (Experiment 2). Context switch effects disappeared when different cues received partial reinforcement in both contexts of training (Experiment 3). The implications of these results for an explanation of context switch effects in terms of ambiguity in the meaning of the cues prompting attention to the context (e.g., Bouton, 1997) are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of context in retrieval of the information is explored, focusing in the differential effects of context change on acquisition and interfering information. Retrieval theory has proposed that context changes affect a specific type of information, either inhibitory or second-learned, interfering information. We propose a modification of retrieval theory based on recent results in our laboratory that suggests that context-specificity does not depend on specific features of the information, but on specific features of the situation that lead participants to pay attention to the context. Once there is something in the situation that leads participants to pay attention to the context, all the information learned seems to become context specific, regardless of whether it is the first or the second meaning of the cue. The outlines of this attentional theory of context processing are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]