Abstract
Pigeons were trained on a conditional discrimination involving form and color elements in an autoshaping procedure. When the colors were also illuminated during 50% of the ITIs (Experiment 1), or were presented alone on additional extinction trials (Experiment 2), the discrimination was not acquired, indicating a loss of salience for stimuli not temporally predictive of reinforcement. But when the colors and the forms were both similarly illuminated, the discrimination was acquired, indicating that relative stimulus validity, not the absolute temporal predictiveness per se, was the controlling variable.
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This research was supported by NIMH Research Grant 1 R01 MH35572-02. This research was reported previously at the 1983 meeting of the Psychonomic Society.
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Williams, B.A. Relative stimulus validity in conditional discrimination. Animal Learning & Behavior 12, 117–121 (1984). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213129
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213129