Abstract
Honeybees were trained to discriminate between simultaneously presented color-odor compounds, one group with color and odor confounded and a control group with color relevant and odor irrelevant; in subsequent differentially reinforced training with the colors in the absence of the odors, the performance of the two groups was the same (Experiment 1). When, however, response to the colors was measured in a 10-min extinction test, discrimination was found to be poorer after confounded training (Experiment 2), and like results were obtained in an extinction test with the odors after control animals had been trained with odor relevant and color irrelevant, the confounded animals showing poorer discrimination of the odors than the controls (Experiment 3). The results of the first two experiments, in which overshadowing of color by odor was found only with an extinction test, require us to take seriously the possibility that our previous modeling experiments (with probability of correct choice in differentially reinforced training as the measure of performance) may have been insufficiently sensitive to noncontinuity effects. Our first efforts to model extinction suggest, however, that all the results of the present experiments can be understood without sacrifice of the parsimonious independence principle.
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This research was supported by Grant BNS-8709785 from the National Science Foundation.
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Couvillon, P.A., Bitterman, M.E. Reciprocal overshadowing in the discrimination of color-odor compounds by honeybees: Further tests of a continuity model. Animal Learning & Behavior 17, 213–222 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207637
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03207637