Abstract
Studies examining adaptation to thermoregulatory challenges have shown that tolerance to hypothermia is mediated, in part, by associative (Pavlovian) learning mechanisms. This study examined whether acquired tolerance to deep body cooling (hypothermia) could be extinguished by conditions in which presentations of the environmental cues were presented in the absence of hypothermia treatment. The results of Experiment 1 indicate that five extinction exposures in which the context was presented alone were not sufficient to extinguish established hypothermia tolerance in rats. Experiment 2 demonstrated that tripling the number of daily extinction exposures from 5 to 15 also did not disrupt adaptation to cold, and further demonstrated that the presentation of a challenge condition (heat exposure) over the 15-day extinction phase of the experiment had no effect on established cold tolerance. Furthermore, Experiment 2 confirmed associative control of tolerance by demonstrating a context shift effect in resistance to cold. The lack of an extinction effect in these two experiments suggests that the environmental context may be acting as an occasion setter.
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We thank Dr. Ralph R. Miller for calling our attention to the possible “occasion setting” role of context. The research reported here was supported in part by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH37535 to David C. Riccio, and the care of animals was approved by Kent State University’s Animal Care and Use Committee (ACUC). Portions of this paper were presented at the 68th annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL, May 1996. We also thank Rolando Toulon for helpful assistance with the data collection for this paper. Steven Kissinger is currently at California Lutheran University, Thousand Oaks, CA 91360.
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Metzger, M.M., Harrod, S.B., Kissinger, S.C. et al. Is Acquired Tolerance to Hypothermia Susceptible to Extinction?. Psychol Rec 48, 33–44 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395257
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395257