Executive Function
Cue Blocking Task
Also called: Kamin blocking task, forward blocking task, allergist task, allergy prediction task, cue competition task, blocking paradigm
Measure blocking in learning from outcomes: participants learn which foods make a made-up creature glow, then rate each food alone, scored as the blocking effect.
5-8 minUntimed
Free to start: 10 free participants per account, then $0.99 per participant for academic research, or any yearly plan. Try it here first, with no account.
- Papers, 2021 to 2025
- 59
- Evidence grade
- C
- Registered clinical studies
- 4
What it measures
Measures blocking in learning from outcomes: a cue that comes with an already predictive cue is learned less. Participants learn which foods make a made-up creature glow, then rate each food alone. The main score is the blocking effect: the control foods' mean rating minus the blocked food's rating.
Constructs
- Associative learning
- Causal learning
- Cue competition
- Prediction error
Research uses
- Research on associative and causal learning
- Prediction-error research, including schizophrenia and schizotypy
- Within-study comparison of learning from outcomes
How the paradigm works
Blocking is a cue competition effect first shown in conditioning by Kamin (1969): when one cue already predicts an outcome, a second cue added to it and followed by the same outcome is learned less. Shanks (1985) found blocking in people's judgments of cause and effect, and Lovibond, Been, Mitchell, Bouton and Frohardt (2003) in the allergist task, in which people learn which foods give a patient an allergic reaction. In their study blocking was weak or absent unless meals first showed that two causes together give a stronger outcome; with that pretraining it was strong. Blocking is often read as a sign of learning from prediction error: a new cue that predicts nothing the first cue did not is not learned.
More about the paradigm
This test follows Lovibond and colleagues' forward design, with a made-up creature that glows in place of the allergic reaction and Noto emoji fruits and vegetables as the foods. In each meal of one or two foods the participant predicts no glow, a glow or a bright glow by click, tap, or the 1, 2 and 3 keys, with no time limit, and then sees what happened. Four phases run without a break: 16 meals of single foods and 6 of pairs show that two foods that each make the creature glow make it glow brightly together; then food A makes it glow (6 meals), alongside fillers (E makes it glow, F and the pair G and H do not, 3 each); then A with B and C with D make it glow (6 each), with the same fillers. B comes with A, which already explains the glow, so it is the blocked food; C and D are new together and are its controls. Which food plays which role and the order of the meals come from the session's seed. Finally each of foods A to H is rated alone on a bar from certainly not to certainly, scored 0 to 10, for how likely it is to make the creature glow, any glow counting, with no feedback. About 5 to 8 minutes.
The main score is the blocking effect: the mean rating of C and D minus the rating of B, in points of the 0 to 10 scale. Positive values mean the blocked food was learned less than its controls. The ratings of B, of C and D and of A come next, then a learning check (the mean rating of A and E, which made the creature glow alone, minus that of F, G and H, which never did) and the share of right predictions before and during the blocking phases. A session whose learning check is not above zero, as when every food gets the same rating, is flagged for review. Scores support research and do not diagnose.
Scores
- Blocking Effectscore
- Mean rating of the control foods C and D minus the rating of the blocked food B, on the 0 to 10 scale.
- Positive: the blocked food was learned less than its controls; 0 is no blocking
- Blocked Food Ratingscore
- Rating of food B, which came only with food A after A alone made the creature glow, from 0 to 10.
- Informational
- Control Foods Ratingscore
- Mean rating of foods C and D, which made the creature glow together, both new, from 0 to 10.
- Informational
- Pretrained Food Ratingscore
- Rating of food A, which made the creature glow alone before it came with B, from 0 to 10.
- Informational; expected to be high
- Learning Checkscore
- Mean rating of foods A and E, which made the creature glow alone, minus that of F, G and H, which never did.
- Higher means the meals were learned; 0 or less is flagged for review
- Pretraining Accuracy%
- Share of right predictions in the 22 meals that show two causes adding up.
- Informational
- Learning Accuracy%
- Share of right predictions in the 36 meals of the blocking phases.
- Higher means the meals were learned
- Median Rating Timems
- Median time to confirm a rating.
- Informational
- Anticipationscount
- Presses within 100 ms of a meal appearing. They are not taken as predictions.
- Quality check
- Ratings Madecount
- Foods rated in the scored run.
- Fewer than planned is flagged for review
- Planned Ratingscount
- Foods to rate: 8.
- Informational
Use and evidence
59 papers from 2021 to 2025 name this task in their title or abstract, down 2% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 285 of 495 test families in our census. See the counts for every test.
Show the numbers
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 9 |
| 2024 | 12 |
| 2023 | 8 |
| 2022 | 20 |
| 2021 | 10 |
| 2020 | 17 |
| 2019 | 13 |
| 2018 | 11 |
| 2017 | 12 |
| 2016 | 7 |
| 2015 | 8 |
| 2014 | 8 |
| 2013 | 7 |
| 2012 | 10 |
| 2011 | 11 |
| 2010 | 19 |
| 2009 | 7 |
| 2008 | 7 |
| 2007 | 4 |
| 2006 | 17 |
| 2005 | 9 |
| 2004 | 9 |
| 2003 | 6 |
| 2002 | 5 |
| 2001 | 4 |
| 2000 | 5 |
Use grade D
30 to 99 papers from 2021 to 2025.
Evidence grade C
At least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies.
- Papers on test-retest reliability
- 0
- Papers on reliability or validity
- 11
- Registered clinical studies using it as an outcome
- 4
How the grades work
Use: A is 1,000 or more papers from 2021 to 2025, B 300 to 999, C 100 to 299, D 30 to 99 and E fewer than 30. Evidence: A means at least 25 papers report its test-retest reliability and at least 25 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome; B, at least 8 test-retest papers, and either 5 registered clinical studies or 150 reliability or validity papers; C, at least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies; D, little published measurement evidence found. The counts measure use. They include every paper that names the task in its title or abstract. Grades describe the published research on this task, not ConductCognition's version of it.
Source: ConductCognition test census 0.22.0, counted 3 November 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Task design
The trial sequence as the test runs in ConductCognition.
- Creature and foods
- A made-up creature drawn by code, which glows, glows brightly or does not glow after a meal, and 12 Noto emoji fruits and vegetables. Which food plays which role is drawn from the session's seed. The glow takes the place of the allergic reaction of the allergist task, so no real food is called unsafe.
- Meals
- 58 meals of one or two foods in four phases, each in a seeded order, with nothing on screen between them. First 22 meals with four other foods show that two foods that each make it glow make it glow brightly together. Then A makes it glow (6 meals), and E makes it glow while F and the pair G and H do not (3 each). Then A with B and C with D make it glow (6 each), with E, F and G with H as before.
- Each meal
- The participant predicts no glow, a glow or a bright glow by click, tap, or the 1, 2 and 3 keys, with no time limit. The creature then shows what happened, with a line saying whether the prediction was right, for 1,500 ms, then a 500 ms blank. Presses under 100 ms are not taken.
- Ratings
- Foods A to H alone, in a seeded order, each rated on a bar from certainly not to certainly, scored 0 to 10, for how likely it is to make the creature glow, any glow counting, with no feedback.
- Scores
- The blocking effect (the mean rating of C and D minus the rating of B), the ratings of B, C and D and of A, a learning check (A and E against F, G and H) and the share of right predictions.
Lovibond and colleagues (2003) named their foods in text, used a patient's allergic reaction and a 0 to 8 scale; this test uses pictures, a made-up creature's glow and a 0 to 10 bar, so its ratings are not directly comparable with theirs. In their study blocking was weak without the meals that show two causes adding up, so those come first here. The scores support research and do not diagnose.
Quality checks
Each session is marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason, before you see its scores.
Scored rows: cue_blocking_rating from the scored run, one rating from 0 to 10 for each of 8 foods, with no time limit and no feedback. A rating is a judgment, not an answer, so accuracy is not judged against chance. Foods that made the creature glow alone not rated above foods that never did (as when every food gets the same rating) and a run short of its planned ratings are flagged for review. Ratings under 200 ms on at least half the foods invalidate.
Why these rules
There is no correct option to compare with chance, so accuracy is not judged against chance. The blocking effect compares ratings of foods that were all followed by the glow, so it means something only once the meals were learned: Lovibond and colleagues (2003) and Beckers and colleagues (2005) read blocking from ratings of foods trained with and without a reaction. The same rating for every food shows no learning of any kind; it is flagged, not excluded. An answer under 200 ms is faster than a simple visual reaction, so it cannot reflect the item. Following response-time effort screening for untimed tests (Wise and Kong 2005), the session is invalid only when at least half the answers are that fast.
No percentile. Scores and quality flags only.
Running this test
Settings you can change
This test runs with fixed settings.
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Devices and languages
- Untimed test: runs on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. Participant devices
- Languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese.
- Available on: Every plan, including the free plan.
- No percentile. Scores and quality flags only. How norms work
- Recruiting online? See the setup guides for Prolific, Sona Systems, CloudResearch Connect and Qualtrics.
Cite and describe
Participants completed the Cue Blocking Task in a web browser (ConductCognition task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0; Kamin, 1969; Shanks, 1985; Lovibond et al., 2003). The main score was blocking effect (mean rating of the control foods C and D minus the rating of the blocked food B, on the 0 to 10 scale).
ConductCognition versions: task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0. Every export records the versions each session used, for a methods section.
- Kamin, L. J. (1969). Predictability, surprise, attention, and conditioning. In B. A. Campbell & R. M. Church (Eds.), Punishment and aversive behavior (pp. 279-296). Appleton-Century-Crofts. Blocking in conditioning: a stimulus added to one that already predicts the outcome is learned less.
- Shanks, D. R. (1985). Forward and backward blocking in human contingency judgement. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology Section B, 37(1b), 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/14640748508402082Blocking in people's judgments of whether an action produced an outcome, in a video game.
- Lovibond, P. F., Been, S.-L., Mitchell, C. J., Bouton, M. E., & Frohardt, R. (2003). Forward and backward blocking of causal judgment is enhanced by additivity of effect magnitude. Memory & Cognition, 31(1), 133-142. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03196088The design: pretraining with foods whose effects add up, A+ then AB+ against CD+, fillers, and ratings of each food.
- Beckers, T., De Houwer, J., Pineño, O., & Miller, R. R. (2005). Outcome additivity and outcome maximality influence cue competition in human causal learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31(2), 238-249. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.31.2.238Blocking read as a lower rating of the blocked food than of its controls, larger after additive pretraining.
- Moran, P. M., Rouse, J. L., Cross, B., Corcoran, R., & Schürmann, M. (2012). Kamin blocking is associated with reduced medial-frontal gyrus activation: Implications for prediction error abnormality in schizophrenia. PLoS ONE, 7(8), e43905. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0043905Blocking as a measure of prediction error in learning, disrupted in schizophrenia, in relatives and in high schizotypy, with another task.
Source papers
- Lovibond PF, Been S-L, Mitchell CJ, Bouton ME, Frohardt R (2003). Forward and backward blocking of causal judgment is enhanced by additivity of effect magnitude. Memory & Cognition, 31(1):133-142.N 80, Undergraduate students
- No normative data for this task.Paradigm source, N/A
Questions
How long does the Cue Blocking Task take?
About 5 to 8 minutes, as listed in the test library.
What device does a participant need?
Untimed test: runs on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. The browser must be Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
What scores does it produce?
Blocking Effect, Blocked Food Rating, Control Foods Rating, Pretrained Food Rating, Learning Check, Pretraining Accuracy, Learning Accuracy, Median Rating Time, Anticipations, Ratings Made and Planned Ratings. Each session is also marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason.
How widely is the Cue Blocking Task used in research?
59 papers from 2021 to 2025 name it in their title or abstract, down 2% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 285 of 495 test families in the ConductCognition test census (use grade D). Source: ConductCognition test census 0.22.0, counted 3 November 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
How much reliability evidence does the Cue Blocking Task have?
In the published research, 0 papers report its test-retest reliability and 4 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome (evidence grade C in the ConductCognition test census).
Does it report a percentile?
No. Scores and quality flags only.
Which languages can participants use?
Participants can take this test in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. English is on every plan, and the other languages come with yearly plans. Have a native speaker read the machine-translated text before launch.
Is this a clinical test?
No. ConductCognition is for research use only. It runs, scores and exports the test; clinical interpretation is outside the platform.
Every test: the full test list.
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