Random yoking: An alternative to feedback procedures for preventing superstition in the human "learned helplessness" paradigm

The "learned helplessness" model of human depression requires that humans d emonstrate deficits similar to animals following exposure to noncontingent events. However, the feedback procedure usually employed in the triadic ins trumental induction phase represents a confound in studies of the interfere nce effect in humans. Matute (1994) concluded that the feedback procedure i s necessary for the interference effect, which is thus due to feedback indu ced failure rather than learned helplessness. As an alternative, we hypothe size that feedback alerts participants to noncontingency, such that subsequ ent interference is not inconsistent with learned helplessness theory. The present study evaluates these competing claims by incorporating a never man ipulation designed to promote the perception of noncontingency in Mature's (1994) triadic no-feedback-procedure induction. A second noncontingent yoke d group received the same tones as the usual direct yoked group, but in ran dom order so as to disrupt the "late trials" distribution of short-latency tones which promotes superstitious responding. As predicted, the random-yok ing procedure inhibited superstition. The interference effect was observed in the random-yoked but not the direct-yoked triad. Thus random-yoked parti cipants may have developed the expectation of noncontingency which is criti cal to learned helplessness. It is concluded that the confounded feedback p rocedure is not necessary for the interference effect and should be avoided in future research. (C) 1998 Academic Press.