Abstract
Rats were trained in conditioned suppression discriminations where shock at the beginning of a trial signaled either shock or no-shock at the end of the trial. In the shock-positive condition, shock at the beginning of a presentation of white noise signaled that noise would end with shock; noise that did not begin with shock did not end with shock. In the shock-negative discrimination, shock at the beginning of noise signaled that noise would not end with shock; presentations of noise that did not begin with shock ended with shock. In shock-random training, shock at the beginning of noise did not reliably signal whether the noise presentation would or would not end with shock. Most subjects in shock-negative training quickly developed a differential pattern of suppression on positive (shock reinforced) trials and no suppression on negative (nonreinforced) trials. The shock-positive discrimination was much more difficult to establish and was not acquired by the majority of the rats. This "feature-negative" effect is a clear exception to the general superiority of feature-positive learning commonly observed in discriminations based on a single distinguishing feature. The results are discussed in terms of Pavlovian stimulus-shock contingencies in the shock-positive and shock-negative paradigms, which appear to favor rapid development of the shock-negative discrimination.
Full text
PDF
Selected References
These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.
- Bottjer S. W., Hearst E. Food delivery as a conditional stimulus: Feature-learning and memory in pigeons. J Exp Anal Behav. 1979 Mar;31(2):189–207. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1979.31-189. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Solomon R. L., Corbit J. D. An opponent-process theory of motivation. II. Cigarette addiction. J Abnorm Psychol. 1973 Apr;81(2):158–171. doi: 10.1037/h0034534. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Terry W. S., Wagner A. R. Short-term memory for "surprising" versus "expected" unconditioned stimuli in Pavlovian conditioning. J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 1975 Apr;1(2):122–133. doi: 10.1037//0097-7403.1.2.122. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
- Wagner A. R., Logan F. A., Haberlandt K., Price T. Stimulus selection in animal discrimination learning. J Exp Psychol. 1968 Feb;76(2):171–180. doi: 10.1037/h0025414. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]