Abstract
Conditioned suppression in rats is often unaffected when the context (or set of background stimuli) is changed following conditioning. This suggests that responding to the conditioned stimulus (CS) can be relatively insensitive to the context in which the CS is presented. In two experiments, we examined whether sensitivity to contextual stimuli is affected by preexposure to the CS. In Experiment 1, when the CS was novel at the outset of conditioning, conditioned suppression was not affected when the context was changed following conditioning. However, when the CS had been preexposed, responding was weaker when extinction occurred outside of the conditioning context. In Experiment 2, responding was again sensitive to the test context, regardless of whether preexposure occurred in the conditioning context or in an alternate context. These results suggest that the extent to which responding is sensitive to context can depend on the conditioning history of the CS.
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This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grants BNS 86-07208 and BNS 89-08535 to M. E. Bouton and by a National Institute of Mental Health postdoctoral training Grant MH 09896 to D. Swartzentruber. We thank R. A. Rescorla for his comments on a draft of this manuscript.
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Swartzentruber, D., Bouton, M.E. Context sensitivity of conditioned suppression following preexposure to the conditioned stimulus. Animal Learning & Behavior 20, 97–103 (1992). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03200406
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03200406