Covariation in conditioned response strength between stimuli trained in compound

Conditioned lick suppression by water-deprived rats was used to elaborate on recent evidence that the attenuated conditioned response elicited by an overshadowed stimulus may be enhanced by extinction of the overshadowing stimulus with which it had been trained in simultaneous compound. Using a modified serial stimulus arrangement in which a light coexisted with the last half of a tone that terminated with footshock, it was found in Experiment 1 that the tone overshadowed the light. Extinction of the tone-shock association resulted in a virtually complete recovery of the response to the overshadowed light. Using this serial overshadowing procedure, the possibility that the strength of a conditioned response to an element trained in compound covaries as a function of the strength of the response to the other element was tested in Experiment 2. Following overshadowing training similar to that of Experiment 1, independent reinforcement of the overshadowed light, that is, associative inflation, was found to have no deleterious effect on the response to the overshadowing tone. This suggests that the effects of postconditioning extinction and inflation of one element do not have symmetrical effects upon responding to the other element. The results of Experiment 2 were replicated in Experiment 3 using a simultaneous compound stimulus as opposed to the serial compound of the previous studies. These results are discussed in terms of various associative and cognitive models of learning and performance.

[1]  M. D. Egger,et al.  Secondary reinforcement in rats as a function of information value and reliability of the stimulus. , 1962, Journal of experimental psychology.

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

[3]  W. W. Cumming,et al.  SOME DETERMINERS OF ATTENTION1 , 1968 .

[4]  P. Seraganian,et al.  Blocking the development of stimulus control when stimuli indicate periods of nonreinforcement. , 1969, Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior.

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

[6]  J. Ayres,et al.  US-alone presentations as an extinction procedure , 1973 .

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

[8]  E. Wasserman,et al.  Association of conditioned stimuli during serial conditioning by pigeons , 1978 .

[9]  R. Rescorla,et al.  Within-compound associations in a variety of compound conditioning procedures , 1980 .

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

[11]  C. Cunningham.  Association between the elements of a bivalent compound stimulus. , 1981, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.

[12]  R. Bolles,et al.  A nonassociative aspect of overshadowing , 1981 .

[13]  L. Green,et al.  Reevaluation of things past , 1982, The Pavlovian Journal of Biological Science.

[14]  Ralph R. Miller,et al.  Reminder-induced recovery of associations to an overshadowed stimulus , 1982 .

[15]  Ralph R. Miller,et al.  Recovery of an overshadowed association achieved by extinction of the overshadowing stimulus. , 1985 .

[16]  P. Holland.  Element pretraining influences the content of appetitive serial compound conditioning in rats. , 1985, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.

[17]  A. Dickinson,et al.  Contingency Effects with Maintained Instrumental Reinforcement , 1985 .

[18]  R. R. Miller,et al.  Associative effects of US preexposure: modulation of conditioned responding by an excitatory training context. , 1987, Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes.