Motivational State as a Basis for Toleration Extinction of an Appetitionally Motivated Habit

Abstract

A toleration extinction procedure, making use of internal cues associated with a deprivation state as discriminative stimuli, was applied to a water-reinforced lever-pressing habit. Following limited VI training, rats were satiated before undergoing 23.5-hr water redeprivation either in a holding cage or in the operant chamber (lever functionless). To equate session-onset cues, all animals were then placed in home cages for 0.5 hr before the first extinction session. Rats redeprived in the operant chamber showed facilitated extinction, supporting the assumption that internal deprivation cues can mediate extinction by serving as a manipulable component of the original learning context and demonstrating that the applicability of a toleration procedure is not restricted to aversively motivated habits.