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Context-Specificity of Target Versus Feature Inhibition in a Feature-Negative Discrimination

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Mark E. Bouton
Mark E. Bouton
Mark E. Bouton
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James Byron Nelson at University of the Basque Country
James Byron Nelson
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Abstract

Four experiments with rats examined the effects of a context switch on inhibition that was acquired during a feature-negative discrimination. A target conditioned stimulus was paired with food when it was presented alone but occurred without food when it was combined with a feature stimulus. A context switch following training did not disrupt inhibition conditioned to the feature. However, responding to the target was more difficult to inhibit when it was tested in a different context. It is suggested that both the target and the feature acquired inhibition and that the target's inhibition was especially sensitive to the context. The feature may inhibit responding to the target (a) by directly suppressing the representation of the food and (b) by activating the target's own inhibitory association with food, which is at least partly context-specific. Implications for theories of inhibition and negative occasion-setting are discussed.
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Journal
of
Experimental
Psychology:
Animal
Behavior
Processes
1994, Vol.
20, No. 1,
51-65
Copyright
1994
by the
American
Psychological
Association,
Inc.
0097-7403/94/S3.00
Context-Specificity
of
Target
Versus
Feature
Inhibition
in a
Feature-Negative
Discrimination
Mark
E.
Bouton
and
James
B.
Nelson
Four experiments with
rats
examined
the
effects
of a
context switch
on
inhibition that
was
acquired
during
a
feature-negative discrimination.
A
target conditioned stimulus
was
paired
with food when
it was
presented alone
but
occurred without food when
it was
combined with
&
feature stimulus.
A
context switch following training
did not
disrupt inhibition conditioned
to the
feature. However,
responding
to the
target
was
more
difficult
to
inhibit when
it was
tested
in a
different context.
It
is
suggested that both
the
target
and the
feature acquired inhibition
and
that
the
target's
inhibition
was
especially
sensitive
to the
context.
The
feature
may
inhibit responding
to the
target
(a) by
directly suppressing
the
representation
of the
food
and (b) by
activating
the
target's
own
inhibitory
association with food, which
is at
least partly context-specific. Implications
for
theories
of
inhi-
bition
and
negative
occasion-setting
are
discussed.
The
results
of a
number
of
experiments suggest that
ex-
tinction
performance
is
relatively specific
to the
context
in
which
it is
learned.
For
example,
if
conditioned
stimulus
(CS)-unconditioned stimulus (US) pairings
are
given
in one
context
and
then
CS-alone
training (extinction)
is
given
in
another context,
a
return
of the CS to the
original condi-
tioning context
can
renew extinguished performance
to the
CS
(e.g., Bouton
&
Holies,
1979; Bouton
&
King,
1983;
Bouton
&
Peck, 1989). Although extinction performance
is
specific
to its
context, conditioning performance
is
much less
so.
When
the
context
is
switched
after
conditioning, there
is
often
relatively little diminution
of the
conditioned response
(CR)
(e.g.,
Bouton
&
King, 1983; Bouton
&
Peck, 1989;
Bouton
&
Swartzentruber,
1986; Hall
&
Honey, 1989; Kaye
&
Mackintosh, 1990; Kaye, Preston, Szabo,
Druiff,
&
Mackintosh, 1987).
It
may be
reasonable
to
suppose that
the CS
acquires
a
second association during extinction
and
that this association
is
especially sensitive
to the
context (Bouton, 1993).
One
possibility
is
that
the
animal learns
a new
inhibitory asso-
ciation with
the CS
(e.g.,
CS-no
US) in
extinction. Such
learning
has
been proposed
by
several conditioning models
(e.g.,
Konorski,
1967;
Pearce,
1987;
Pearce
&
Hall, 1980;
Wagner,
1981;
see
also Pavlov, 1927) that assume that non-
reinforcement
of the CS in
extinction will cause
acquisition
of
a
second inhibitory association instead
of the
unlearning
of
the
original
CS-US
association (e.g., Rescorla
&
Wagner,
1972). According
to
these models,
at the end of
extinction,
the
CS has
both excitatory
and
inhibitory values.
On
this
Mark
E.
Bouton
and
James
B.
Nelson,
Department
of
Psychol-
ogy,
University
of
Vermont.
This
research
was
supported
by
Grants
BNS
89-08535
and
IBN
92-09454
from
the
National
Science
Foundation.
Correspondence
concerning
this
article
should
be
addressed
to
Mark
E.
Bouton,
Department
of
Psychology,
University
of
Vermont,
Burlington,
Vermont
05405.
view,
the
context-specificity
of
extinction could come about
if
inhibition
is
relatively specific
to the
context
in
which
it
is
learned.
The
present experiments were therefore designed
to
test
whether conditioned inhibition
is
reduced with
a
change
of
context.
To
produce inhibition,
we
used
a
feature-negative
discrimination procedure.
In
this sort
of
procedure,
a
target
CS,
such
as a
tone,
is
paired with
a US
when
it is
presented
alone
(T+)
but is
presented
without
a US
when
it is
combined
with
a
"feature" stimulus, such
as a
light
(LT-).
The
feature-
negative procedure
is
widely known
to
produce inhibition
to
the
feature (L). Indeed,
it is
sometimes taken
as the
basic
means
of
producing conditioned inhibition (e.g., Rescorla
&
Wagner,
1972).
If
conditioned inhibition
is
specific
to its
context, then
a
context switch
after
feature-negative training
might
cause
a
loss
of
inhibition
to the
feature
CS.
Recent theories
of
conditioning, however, suggest that
the
target stimulus might also acquire some inhibition
in the
feature-negative
discrimination.
As is
expected when
a CS is
nonreinforced
in
extinction,
the
target itself might acquire
an
inhibitory
association when
it is
nonreinforced
in
compound
with
the
feature
in
this paradigm (e.g., Pearce
&
Hall, 1980;
Wagner,
1981). Thus, both feature
and
target
may
acquire
some inhibition when
the
compound
is
nonreinforced
in the
feature-negative
paradigm.
We
designed
the
present experiments
to
investigate
the
effects
of
switching
the
context
after
feature-negative dis-
crimination training.
We
used
an
appetitive conditioning
preparation
in
which
we
monitored
the
number
of
times
the
rat
entered
the
food
cup or
magazine (magazine
en-
tries) during
the CS
(e.g.,
Hall
&
Channell,
1985; Hall
&
Honey,
1990; Kaye
&
Mackintosh, 1990; Wilson
&
Pearce, 1990).
The
results suggest that inhibition
is
indeed
attenuated
when
the
context
is
switched
after
feature-
negative training. However,
in the
present experiments,
the
context switch reduced inhibition
to the
target
CS but not
inhibition
to the
feature.
The
results have implications
for
the
issue
of
what
is
learned
in
feature-negative discrimina-
tion learning.
51
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... Various attempts at modeling and explaining the mechanism of occasion setting (i.e., modulation) have been proposed (Bonardi et al., 2017;Delamater, 2012;Schmajuk et al., 1998). The most parsimonious is that of Bouton and Nelson (1994), which can be described most accurately as inhibition of inhibition, or simply, disinhibition. Historically, disinhibition has been described as the removal of an inhibitory process (Pavlov, 1927). ...
... However, none of the typical tests of occasion setting were conducted, and no tests compared the pattern of behavior in this patterning task to a feature-positive discrimination, so it is not currently known whether dual-response procedures recruit true occasion setting mechanisms. Bouton and Nelson's (1994) mechanism could be extended to a scenario in which one response is correct on XA trials and a different response on A-alone trials (see Figure 1b). In a dual-response operant procedure (XA[R1+, R2−]/A[R1−, R2+]), X could come to disinhibit a particular response (R1) to A. Initially, both responses (R1 and R2) would be partially reinforced in the presence of A, making it excitatory op the ability to disinhibit Avelop its own excitation of R1, but that would be independent of its ability to disinhibit A. If X is disinhibiting A (i.e., occasion setting), then extinction of X should have little effect on responding during XA trials, but disrupt responding during test trials of X-alone. ...
... (a) A typical feature-positive discrimination where trials of XA are paired with R1, and A develops both excitatory and inhibitory links with R1 and its associated outcome (A:R1-/XA:R1+). (b) Modified from Bouton and Nelson (1994) to include a conditioning procedure with trials of A-alone paired with reinforcement of R2, and other trials of X-alone and A-alone paired with reinforcement of R1 (A:R1-/R2+; XA:R1+/R2-). The target (A) develops both excitatory and inhibitory links to R1 and R2 and their associated outcomes, respectively. ...
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Contextual control of the extinction of conditioned fear: Tests for the associative value of the context.
Article
  • Jul 1983
Four conditioned suppression experiments examined the influence of contextual stimuli on the rat's fear of an extinguished conditioned stimulus (CS). When rats received pairings of a CS with shock in one context and then extinction of the CS in another context, fear of the CS was renewed when the CS was returned to and tested in the original context (Experiments 1 and 3). No such renewal was obtained when the CS was tested in a second context after extinction had occurred in the conditioning context (Experiment 4). In Experiment 2, shocks presented following extinction reinstated fear of the CS, but only if they were presented in the context in which the CS was tested. In each experiment, the associative properties of the contexts were independently assessed. Contextual excitation was assessed primarily with context-preference tests in which the rats chose to sit in either the target context or an adjoining side compartment. Contextual inhibition was assessed with summation tests. Although reinstatement was correlated with demonstrable contextual excitation present during testing, the renewal effect was not. Moreover, there was no evidence that contextual inhibition developed during extinction. The results suggest that fear of an extinguished CS can be affected by the excitatory strength of the context but that independently demonstrable contextual excitation or inhibition is not necessary for contexts to control that fear.
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Context Specificity of Conditioning and Latent Inhibition: Evidence for a Dissociation of Latent Inhibition and Associative Interference
Article
  • May 1987
Conditioning may generalize from one context to another when latent inhibition (the effect on subsequent conditioning of prior unreinforced exposure to the stimulus) does not. Experiment 1 studied conditioned approach and licking by rats to a stimulus paired with the delivery of water and confirmed that latent inhibition could be abolished by a change of context, while prior aversive conditioning to the stimulus, produced by pairing it with mild shock, interfered with the acquisition of conditioned approach and licking regardless of this change of context. Thus even when conditioning and latent inhibition were measured in the same way, the former generalized across contexts, and the latter did not. Experiment 2 showed that the effects not only of unreinforced exposure to a stimulus but also of presentation of the stimulus uncorrelated with the delivery of water were confined to the context in which they occurred. Thus the generalization of conditioning from one context to another and the failure of latent inhibition to generalize cannot be attributed to the occurrence of rein-forcers during conditioning and their absence in latent inhibition. This conclusion was confirmed in Experiment 3, where animals received both aversive conditioning trials and unreinforced presentations of other stimuli in the treatment phase of the experiment, but were then conditioned to one of these stimuli paired with water. Once again, the effects of aversive conditioning transferred perfectly from one context to another, while those of unreinforced presentations did not. Latent inhibition, these results suggest, is not easily explained by supposing that animals associate an unreinforced stimulus with zero consequences and have to unlearn this association when the stimulus is then paired with a reinforcer.
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Occasion Setting in Pavlovian Conditioning
Article
  • Dec 1992
  • Psychol Learn Motiv
This chapter describes Pavlovian conditioning as the transfer of control of reflexes (unconditioned responses or URs) from stimuli that elicit them unconditionally (USs) to other stimuli that normally are incapable of eliciting them. Although auditory cues seldom elicit substantial salivation spontaneously, a tone provokes that response if it consistently predicts food delivery. This new-found control of salivation by the tone is typically attributed to the acquisition of some association or potentiated connection between the CS and US pathways: by virtue of that association, the CS becomes a substitute elicitor of activity along some portion of the US-UR pathway. This is often described as the CS's “activating a representation of the US”. Another behavioral control function occasionally ascribed to Pavlovian CSsis modulation. Rather than acquiring its own ability to elicit behavior usually controlled by another reflex system, a Pavlovian CS influences the efficacy of the normal elicitor of a response. The chapter is concerned with a particular modulatory function of CSs in rats solutions of elementary conditional discriminations, in which one CS modifies the efficacy of Pavlovian associations between other cues and the US. This function is called as occasion setting, which is readily distinguished from elicitation both conceptually and empirically, and perhaps anatomically as well. Furthermore, this occasion-setting function involves a hierarchical, multilayered organization of representations of events and relations and thus may aid the expansion of the domain of Pavlovian accounts of behavior.
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Associative Relations in Instrumental Learning: The Eighteenth Bartlett Memorial Lecture
Article
  • Feb 1991
Instrumental learning involves three primary events: a stimulus (S), a response (R), and an outcome (O). Evidence is reviewed indicating the presence of binary associations among those events, as well as a hierarchical structure of the form S–(R–O). Experiments examining the conditions that produce learning, the content of the learning once it has occurred, and the way learning maps into performance all suggest the presence of such a hierarchical structure.
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