Proactive interference by cues presented without outcomes: Differences in context specificity of latent inhibition and conditioned inhibition

This report is part of a larger project examining associative interference as a function of the nature of the interfering and target associations. Lick suppression experiments with rats assessed the effects of context shifts on proactive outcome interference by latent inhibition (LI) and Pavlovian conditioned inhibition (CI) treatments on subsequently trained Pavlovian conditioned excitation treatment. LI and CI were trained in Context A during Phase 1, and then excitation treatment was administered in Context B during Phase 2, followed by tests for conditioned excitation in Contexts A, B, or C. Experiment 1 preliminarily established our LI and CI treatments and resulted in equally retarded acquisition of behavioral control when the target cue was subsequently trained as a conditioned excitor and tested in Context A. However, only CI treatment caused the target to pass a summation test for inhibition. Centrally, Experiment 2 consisted of LI and CI treatments in Context A followed by excitatory training in Context B. Testing found low excitatory control by both LI and CI cues in Context A relative to strong excitatory control in Context B, but CI treatment transferred to Context C more strongly than LI treatment. Experiment 3 determined that LI treatment failed to transfer to Context C even when the number of LI trials was greatly increased. Thus, first-learned LI appears to be relatively context specific, whereas first-learned CI generalizes to a neutral context. These observations add to existing evidence that LI and CI treatments result in different types of learning that diverge sharply in transfer to a novel test context

Assessing the blocking of occasion setting

An occasion setter (OS) is a stimulus or context with the capacity to disambiguate an ambiguous conditioned stimulus (CS). Previous research has shown that OSs share some features with regular Pavlovian CSs. Amongst them, research has shown that OSs are subject to blocking; that is, a new OS exerts reduced behavioral control after training in compound with a previously established OS. Of additional interest, in Pavlovian blocking, it has been reported that a blocked CS comes to elicit conditioned responding after the extinction of the blocking CS. This is an example of retrospective revaluation, a family of phenomena in which the response to a specific stimulus is modified by training a related cue. Here, three experiments sought to extend the analogies between OS and Pavlovian conditioning by examining the blocking of OSs and its retrospective revaluation. In all experiments, an OS was established by pairing a CS with food in the presence of the OS, but not in its absence (i.e., positive OS). Blocking was then trained by presenting the OS in compound with a novel OS. Experiment 1 showed blocking of the second OS, but direct exposure to the blocking OS did not enhance responding to the second OS. Experiment 2 replicated the blocking effect but subsequent training of the blocking OS with a reversed contingency showed no retrospective revaluation. Experiment 3 examined whether blocking of the OS occurred with a novel CS during the compound phase. In this experiment blocking was again observed, but only when subjects were tested with the original CS. These results are discussed focusing on the underlying links at work in occasion setting

Psicothema

Resumen tomado de la publicación. Resumen también en inglésEl análisis pavloviano de tolerancia a las drogas describe cómo los contextos de administración de la droga participan en la elicitación de respuestas condicionadas compensatorias que causan, en parte, tolerancia. Hallazgos indican que si una asociación es adquirida en un contexto y extinguida en otro, al exponer a los sujetos al contexto de adquisición se producirá renovación de la respuesta condicionada. Existe evidencia ambigua acerca de si este efecto disminuye o no al extinguir la asociación en múltiples contextos. Esta investigación evalúa la existencia del fenómeno de Renovación en la tolerancia al etanol, y si éste disminuye por la extinción en múltiples contextos. Se aporta evidencia de Renovación en la tolerancia al etanol en ratas, sin embargo, no se observó disminución de ésta al extinguir en múltiples contextos.AsturiasColegio Oficial de Psicólogos de Asturias; Calle Ildefonso Sánchez del Rio, 4-1õB; 33001 Oviedo; +34 985285778; +34 985281374;ES