Acquired equivalence and distinctiveness of cues.

In Experiments 1 and 2, rats received initial training in which two stimuli (A and N) were either followed by the same consequence (food) or by different consequences (food and no food). Subsequently N was paired with electric shock and the generalization of conditioned suppression to A was assessed. Suppression to A was more marked when A and N had both been followed by food than when they had had different outcomes. In Experiment 3, 3 stimuli (A, B, and N) were presented initially. For one group, A and N were paired with food and B was nonreinforced: for a second group, B was paired with food and A and N were nonreinforced. Generalization of suppression was found to be more substantial to A than to B for both groups. These results indicate that the extent to which stimuli are treated as being equivalent is partly determined by their reinforcement histories.

[1]  A. Goss.  A stimulus-response analysis of the interaction of cue-producing and instrumental responses. , 1955, Psychological review.

[2]  M. Sidman,et al.  Conditional discrimination vs. matching to sample: an expansion of the testing paradigm. , 1982, Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior.

[3]  E. Gibson,et al.  The effect of prolonged exposure to visually presented patterns on learning to discriminate them. , 1956, Journal of comparative and physiological psychology.

[4]  R. Morris,et al.  Ibotenate Lesions of Hippocampus and/or Subiculum: Dissociating Components of Allocentric Spatial Learning , 1990, The European journal of neuroscience.

[5]  C. L. Hull.  The problem of stimulus equivalence in behavior theory. , 1939 .

[6]  Enhanced discriminability and reduced associability following flavor preexposure , 1989 .

[7]  M. A. Trapold,et al.  Are expectancies based upon different positive reinforcing events discriminably different , 1970 .

[8]  R. Rescorla.  "Configural" conditioning in discrete-trial bar pressing. , 1972, Journal of comparative and physiological psychology.

[9]  D. Lawrence.  The nature of a stimulus: Some relationships between learning and perception. , 1962 .

[10]  W. James,et al.  The Principles of Psychology. , 1983 .

[11]  William Epstein,et al.  Varieties of perceptual learning , 1967 .

[12]  J. Gibson,et al.  Perceptual learning; differentiation or enrichment? , 1955, Psychological review.

[13]  Peter C. Holland,et al.  Acquisition of Representation-Mediated Conditioned Food Aversions. , 1981 .

[14]  J. Deese.  The psychology of learning , 1952 .

[15]  D. Chantrey,et al.  Retardation of Discrimination Learning in Monkeys and Chicks Previously Exposed to Both Stimuli , 1972, Nature.

[16]  G. Peterson,et al.  Effects of altering outcome expectancies on pigeons' delayed conditional discrimination performance , 1980 .

[17]  D. Lawrence.  Acquired distinctiveness of cues; transfer between discrimination on the basis of familiarity with the stimulus. , 1949, Journal of experimental psychology.

[18]  G. Grice,et al.  Effect of concurrent responses on the evocation and generalization of the conditioned eyeblink. , 1960, Journal of experimental psychology.

[19]  N. Miller,et al.  Theory and experiment relating psychoanalytic displacement to stimulus-response generalization. , 1948, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[20]  N. Mackintosh.  The psychology of animal learning , 1974 .

[21]  J. Deese.  Principles of Psychology , 1923, Nature.

[22]  N. Mackintosh,et al.  An associative theory of the representation of stimuli: Applications to perceptual learning and latent inhibition. , 1989 .

[23]  G. Paxinos,et al.  The Rat Brain in Stereotaxic Coordinates , 1983 .

[24]  W. Vaughan,et al.  Formation of equivalence sets in pigeons , 1988 .

[25]  R. Rescorla,et al.  Within-compound flavor associations. , 1978, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.

[26]  M. M. Patterson,et al.  Fimbrial lesions and sensory preconditioning. , 1984, Behavioral neuroscience.

[27]  S. Siegel.  Overtraining and transfer processes. , 1967, Journal of comparative and physiological psychology.

[28]  Eugene Galanter,et al.  Handbook of mathematical psychology: I. , 1963 .

[29]  G. Grice,et al.  Mediated stimulus equivalence and distinctiveness in human conditioning. , 1958, Journal of experimental psychology.

[30]  J. Pearce,et al.  A model for Pavlovian learning: Variations in the effectiveness of conditioned but not of unconditioned stimuli. , 1980 .

[31]  R. Rescorla.  Stimulus generalization: some predictions from a model of Pavlovian conditioning. , 1976, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.

[32]  C. Burt.  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF LEARNING , 1958 .

[33]  N. Miller,et al.  Social Learning and Imitation , 1942 .

[34]  E. Gibson,et al.  Principles of Perceptual Learning and Development , 1973 .

[35]  N. Mackintosh,et al.  Mechanisms of animal discrimination learning , 1971 .

[36]  D. Lawrence.  Acquired distinctiveness of cues: selective association in a constant stimulus situation. , 1950, Journal of experimental psychology.

[37]  R. C. Honey,et al.  Stimulus generalization as a function of stimulus novelty and familiarity in rats. , 1990, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.

[38]  D. R. Thomas,et al.  Effects of interdimensional training on stimulus generalization. , 1966, Journal of Experimental Psychology.

[39]  W. F. Prokasy,et al.  Classical conditioning II: Current research and theory. , 1972 .

[40]  E. Gibson.  A re-examination of generalization. , 1959, Psychological review.

[41]  Richard C. Atkinson,et al.  Stimulus Sampling Theory , 1967 .

[42]  M. A. Saavedra.  Pavlovian compound conditioning in the rabbit , 1975 .