Human evaluative conditioning: Is there a diminishing frequency in impulses to remove a distraction during a reading task when an obstacle is presented?

Abstract

In this study, it is the goal to evaluate the effects of human evaluative conditioning through a reading comprehension experiment. Using impulsive behaviours as ‘inspiration’, which are behaviours that tend to work with various triggers depending on the individual, a simplified experiment containing three reading comprehension trials was devised. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic resulting in the lack of participants suffering from impulsive disorders, 15 random acquaintances were chosen to participate. During trial one, participants had to read a text and then answer 10 questions about it. Trial two introduced clickable brown ‘stains’ as a nuisance to the reading screen, which appeared at a randomized time, in a randomized location and had a randomized size. Trial three did the same as trial two with the addition of popups following the removal of a ‘stain’. The experiment examined whether adding an obstacle or extra step (popups) to an action (removing stains) would change the behaviour of people. The results were more related to attention than human evaluative conditioning, and inconclusive since multiple issues prevented the experiment from being performed in the proper conditions. 2/3 of the participants were not bothered by the ‘stains’, which is counterintuitive to what was expected, and thus produced no data on stain removal. However, results showed that the addition of stains led to more attentional shifts and less accurate answers to questions. Overall, their performance during the third trial was better, which could be due to the familiarity effect, i.e., they got used to stains. The other 1/3 of participants showed a stark difference in behaviour. They suffered from disorders like dyslexia, ADHD, impulsiveness, and autism. They were bothered by stains and actually clicked them away, which reinforces the correlation between concentration issues and people suffering disorders like ADHD, impulsiveness, dyslexia, and perhaps even autism. Reading with distractions is more difficult for people with attention related disorders. Further study in better conditions is needed to investigate whether impulses to remove a distraction can be reduced.