Article

Enhancement of Pavlovian conditioned inhibition achieved by posttraining inflation of the training excitor.

Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA.
Learning and Motivation (impact factor: 0.96). 08/2005; 36(3):331-352. DOI:10.1016/j.lmot.2004.11.006 pp.331-352
Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT In two conditioned lick suppression experiments using water-deprived rats, we examined the effects of following Pavlovian conditioned inhibition training (i.e., A-US/AX-NoUS) with pairings of the training excitor (A) and the unconditioned stimulus (US). Experiments 1 and 2 assessed the effects of this posttraining inflation treatment on Pavlovian conditioned inhibition using a summation test and a retardation test, respectively. Both experiments revealed that subjects exposed to inflation treatment demonstrated behavior indicative of enhanced conditioned inhibition compared to subjects that did not receive inflation treatment. The results in conjunction with other recent findings suggest that posttraining associative deflation (i.e., extinction of A) and inflation effects are more symmetrical than has previously been realized.

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Keywords

conditioned inhibition
 
conditioned lick suppression experiments
 
Experiments 1
 
inflation effects
 
inflation treatment
 
Pavlovian conditioned inhibition
 
Pavlovian conditioned inhibition training
 
posttraining associative deflation
 
posttraining inflation treatment
 
recent findings
 
summation test
 
symmetrical
 
training excitor
 
unconditioned stimulus