Perruchet effect
The Perruchet effect is a psychological phenomenon in which a dissociation is shown between conscious expectation of an event and the strength or speed of a response to the event. This can be demonstrated by sequential analyses of consecutive trials such as eye blinking conditioning, electrodermal shocks and cued go/no-go task. The dissociation design differentiates the automatic associative strength and propositional expectation's effects on associative learning and conditioning, i.e., the cognitive learning process with relationship between events.
The effect is named after Pierre Perruchet, who first proposed a conditioning paradigm to take separate accounts of two mechanisms underlying associative learning processes:
- The automatic formation of links between two events, whereas repeated pairing of the events should enhance the associative strength of conditioned response.
- The propositional reasoning on the relationship between two events, in which inferences drawn from the sequential presentation of events would cast a conscious expectancy on the next event.
Thus, it contrasts traditional strength theory in associative learning and expectancy theory in propositional learning.
The Perruchet effect is considered a type of non-local influence on behavior. It goes against the view that conscious inferences about the relations between events are the offshoot of human conditioned responses, and challenges the single-processing model on propositional learning. To date, the Perruchet effect is one of the strongest pieces of evidence supporting dual-processing model of associative learning.