Abstract
Prior research has demonstrated renewal, which is the ability of contextual cues to modulate excitatory responding to a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus (CS). In the present research, conditioned lick suppression in rats was used to examine similar contextual modulation of Pavlovian conditioned inhibition. After Pavlovian conditioned inhibition training with a CS in one context, subjects were exposed to pairings of the CS with an unconditioned stimulus (US) either in the same or in a second context. Results indicated that, when the CS was paired with the US in the second context, the CS retained its inhibitory control over behavior, provided that testing occurred in the context used for inhibition training. However, when the CS-US pairings occurred in the inhibition training context, the CS subsequently proved to be excitatory regardless of where testing occurred. These observations indicate that conditioned inhibition is subject to renewal.
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Support of this research was provided by NIMH Grant 33881 and the SUNY-Binghamton Center for Cognitive and Psycholinguistic Sciences. R.C.B, was supported by a Canadian NSERC postgraduate scholarship. Thanks are due Nicholas J. Graba me for assistance in experimental design, James Esposito for assistance in collecting the data, and Robert Cole, Francisco Esmoris-Arranz, and Hua Yin for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.
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Fiori, L.M., Barnet, R.C. & Miller, R.R. Renewal of Pavlovian conditioned inhibition. Animal Learning & Behavior 22, 47–52 (1994). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199955
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199955