Associative history affects the associative change undergone by both presented and absent cues in human causal learning.

R. A. Rescorla (2000) noted that a number of influential theories of associative learning do not take the associative history of cues (i.e., the prior training that they have received) into account when calculating the associative change undergone by those cues. The authors tested this assumption in a human causal learning paradigm and found associative history to be an important determinant of the learning undergone by cues that are presented on a trial. Moreover, associative history was also found to influence the amount of retrospective revaluation undergone by absent cues. These findings conflict with models of causal learning in which the associative change undergone by an element of a cue compound is governed by a summed error term (e.g., R. A. Rescorla & A. R. Wagner, 1972).