Abstract
In three experiments, the nictitating membrane response of rabbits was conditioned for 10 daily sessions at interstimulus intervals (ISIs) ranging from 48 to 125 msec, followed by a shift to 250 msec for 5 days. At tested ISIs shorter than 67 msec, there was no evidence of conditioning, and postshift performance revealed neither facilitation nor interference as a result of the first 10 conditioning sessions. Postshift performance of groups conditioned at preshift ISIs of 67 msec or longer revealed a gradient of increasing savings with increasing ISI. One of the groups in Experiment 1, initially conditioned at 250 msec ISI and then shifted to 48 msec, exhibited extinction of the previously well-conditioned response. Analysis of CR-onset latencies substantiated the absence of associative effects at very short ISIs. It was concluded that there is a temporal limit below which classical conditioning of the nictitating membrane response of rabbits employing forward CS-US pairing does not occur.
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Hoehler, F. K., & Thompson, R. F.Multiple unit activity in the hippocampus as a function of CS-US interval during classical conditioning of the rabbit’s nictitating membrane response. Paper presented at the meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Washington, D.C., November 1977.
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Portions of Experiments 1 and 2 formed the substance of a paper read at the annual meeting of the Psychonomic Society, St. Louis, November 1976.
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Salafia, W.R., Lambert, R.W., Host, K.C. et al. Rabbit nictitating membrane conditioning: Lower limit of the effective interstimulus interval. Animal Learning & Behavior 8, 85–91 (1980). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209734
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03209734