Two studies using an ABA design examined the Extinction and renewal of conditioned barpress suppression. Following lights-off and foot shock pairings in Context A, rats were placed in Context B and were given either a standard counterconditioning procedure where the lights-off CS was paired with a novel food US delivered freely or a modified…

The ABA renewal procedure involves pairing a conditional stimulus (CS) and an unconditional stimulus (US) in one context (A), presenting extinction trials of the CS alone in a second context (B), and nonreinforced test trials of the CS in the acquisition context (A). The renewal of extinguished conditioned behaviour is observed during test. The…

The present human fear conditioning study examined whether the valence of an extinction cue has a differential effect on attenuating renewal that is induced by removal of the extinction context. Additionally, the study aimed to assess whether such attenuating effect is based on a modulatory or safety-signal role of the cue. In acquisition,…

Two studies examined whether nonreinforcement of a stimulus in multiple contexts, instead of a single context, would decrease renewal of conditioned fear in rats (as assessed by conditioned suppression of lever pressing). In Experiment 1, renewal was measured after 36 nonreinforced CS trials delivered during six extinction sessions in a single…

Three Pavlovian fear conditioning experiments with rats as subjects explored the effect of extinction in the presence of a concurrent excitor. Our aim was to explore this particular treatment, documented in previous studies to deepen extinction, with novel control groups to shed light on the processes involved in extinction. Relative to subjects…

Conditioned taste aversions (CTAs) may be acquired when an animal consumes a novel taste (CS) and then experiences the symptoms of poisoning (US). This aversion may be extinguished by repeated exposure to the CS alone. However, following a latency period in which the CS is not presented, the CTA will spontaneously recover (SR). In the current…

In experiments that measured food consumption, Holland (1981; "Learning and Motivation," 12, 1-18) found that food aversions were formed when an exteroceptive associate of food was paired with illness, but not when such an associate was paired with shock. By contrast, measuring the ability of food to reinforce instrumental responding,…

Contemporary theories of Pavlovian conditioning propose a distinction between signal learning (SL), in which a conditioned stimulus (CS) becomes a predictor for a biologically significant unconditioned stimulus (US), and evaluative learning (EL), in which the valence of the US is transferred to the CS. This distinction is based largely on the…

Recent evidence suggests that drug-induced conditioned taste avoidance may be mediated by conditioned fear (e.g., Parker, 2003). The experiments reported here evaluated the effect of exposure to a drug-paired flavor on open arm exploration in an elevated plus maze (EPM), a measure of fear. When rats were tested on a familiar (trial 2) EPM, but not…

In conditioned suppression of water licking behavior by rats, we obtained data indicating general transfer of fear conditioning. A series of experiments resulted in two major findings. First, pairing of a neutral stimulus with a shock in the initial conditioning task facilitated acquisition of subsequent fear conditioning to another neutral…

In four experiments using albino rats in an ABA fear renewal paradigm, we studied conditioned fear in the A test context following extinction in Context B. Conditioned suppression of operant responding was the index of fear. In Experiments 1-3, we found that extinguishing a feared cue in compound with a putative conditioned inhibitor of fear led…

In three experiments using the barpress conditioned suppression task with albino rats, we studied the renewal (relapse) of conditioned fear in an ABA fear-renewal paradigm. We found that explicitly unpaired (EU) deliveries of conditioned stimuli (CSs) and unconditioned stimuli (USs) in Context B thwarted fear renewal in Context A. Evidence…

Latent Inhibition (LI) attenuation when a long delay is introduced between acquisition and test phases has been repeatedly observed using aversive conditioning procedures (e.g., Aguado, Symonds, & Hall, 1994). This effect has been used as evidence to support those theories that consider LI to be the result of a retrieval failure. We designed three…