Compound stimulus preexposure effects in an appetitive conditioning procedure

Abstract Experiments examined the influence of nonreinforced exposure to compound stimuli on subsequent appetitive classical conditioning in rats. Nonreinforced exposure to a visual stimulus retarded subsequent acquisition of conditioned responding relative to a nonpreexposed condition (latent inhibition). If the target stimulus was preexposed in a nonreinforced simultaneous compound with a second (nontarget) stimulus, then latent inhibition was abolished. Exposure to the nontarget stimulus prior to compound presentation resulted in enhanced latent inhibition relative to a group that received nonreinforced exposure to the target stimulus alone after exposure to the nontarget stimulus. These results pose problems for most existing theories of stimulus preexposure.

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