Blocking but not conditioned inhibition results when an added stimulus is reinforced in compound with multiple pretrained stimuli.

Conditioned barpress suppression by rats was used to explore the associative status of an initially neutral stimulus that was reinforced in simultaneous compound with two independently pretrained conditioned excitors. In contrast to the Rescorla-Wagner model, which predicts that the target stimulus (X) will be inhibitory following such A+/B+/ABX+ training, the present study found no evidence that X acquired inhibitory associative strength. Rather, the pretrained stimuli merely served to block conditioned excitatory responding to the target stimulus.

[1]  L. Kamin.  Predictability, surprise, attention, and conditioning , 1967 .

[2]  R. Rescorla.  Pavlovian conditioned inhibition , 1969 .

[3]  R. Rescorla.  Reduction in the effectiveness of reinforcement after prior excitatory conditioning , 1970 .

[4]  N. Mackintosh,et al.  Blocking as a Function of Novelty of CS and Predictability of UCS , 1971, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology.

[5]  R. Rescorla.  Summation and retardation tests of latent inhibition. , 1971, Journal of comparative and physiological psychology.

[6]  A. R. Wagner,et al.  CS habituation produces a “latent inhibition effect” but no active “conditioned inhibition” , 1972 .

[7]  R. Rescorla,et al.  A theory of Pavlovian conditioning : Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement , 1972 .

[8]  N. Mackintosh,et al.  Complete suppression to a compound CS does not block further conditioning to each element. , 1974 .

[9]  N. Mackintosh.  A Theory of Attention: Variations in the Associability of Stimuli with Reinforcement , 1975 .

[10]  E. Kremer.  The Rescorla-Wagner model: losses in associative strength in compound conditioned stimuli. , 1978, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.

[11]  J. Pearce,et al.  Latent inhibition of a CS during CS-US pairings. , 1979, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.

[12]  Ralph R. Miller,et al.  Blocking as a Retrieval Failure: Reactivation of Associations to a Blocked Stimulus , 1982, The Quarterly journal of experimental psychology. B, Comparative and physiological psychology.

[13]  E. Damianopoulos.  Necessary and sufficient factors in classical conditioning , 1982, The Pavlovian journal of biological science.