The internet as a research tool in the study of associative learning: An example from overshadowing

The present study aimed to replicate an associative learning effect, overshadowing, both in the traditional laboratory conditions and over the internet. The experimental task required participants to predict an outcome based on the presence of several cues. When a cue that was always trained together with a second cue was presented on isolation at test, the expectancy of the outcome was impaired, which revealed overshadowing. This experimental task was performed by undergraduate students (N = 106) in the laboratory and by a different set of anonymous participants over the internet (N = 91). Similar levels of overshadowing were obtained in both locations. These similarities show that web-delivered experiments can be used as a complement of traditional experiments.