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Rats were successively exposed to three solutions with distinctively different flavors and then tested for both neophobia and propensity to form conditioned taste aversions to a fourth distinctively flavored solution. All permutations between the four solutions (salty, bitter, sweet, and sour) were examined. The prior exposures resulted in attenuation of neophobia to novel salty and sour solutions, but not to equally novel bitter or sweet solutions.. These effects were found to depend upon the diversity of the prior ingestive events rather than upon either a single specific flavor experience or a summation of the reductions in generalized neophobia accrued by each substance separately; both of the latter findings are inconsistent with stimulus generalization being responsible for the observed attenuation of neophobia to salty and sour solutions following exposure to diverse different solutions. A further test of generalization between the salty and bitter solutions, consisting of associating one flavor with poison and extinguishing the avoidance response in half the animals prior to testing for generalization of conditioned taste aversion to the other flavor, also proved negative. Although these effects of exposure to flavors distinctly different from the test solution may be dependent upon solution concentrations, further research found that the same pretest exposures and same test concentrations failed to inhibit formation of conditioned taste aversions. A demonstration of "latent inhibition" attested to the sensitivity of our procedure to potential interference with acquisition of conditioned taste aversions. The results are considered in light of the relationship between neophobia and conditioned tasted aversions, the differential biological relevancy of specific tastes, and abstraction as a cognitive capability of rats. The possibility is raised that the defense against toxins is not the primary function of neophobia. Barnett and Cowan (1976) argue that neophobia is prominent among rats owing to their varied diets and perhaps augmented by the selective pressure of man's attempt to control them with poison. They contend that neophobia may have evolved in rats specifically because of the high likelihood of toxins' occurring in novel, untried substances. This view cannot readily explain the finding that exposure to novelty per se, that is, a varied diet, decreases neophobia to all novel substances, including items that are quite dissimilar to any component of the varied diet (e.g., Braveman & Jarvis, 1978). Moreover, Barnett and Cowan (1976), among others, have suggested, on the theoretical grounds of common function, that neophobia and conditioned taste aversion (CTA) are merely different points on a common dimension of aversive-

Chronic pain patients attending four different pain management programs (N = 160) were compared on multiple variables encompassing demographics, the nature of the pain problem, and treatment history. Programs were selected because they differed on several dimensions (e.g., geographic location, general hospitals vs those serving veterans of Armed Services, university affiliated vs nonaffiliated) believed potentially to interact with treatment outcome. Results indicated differences between hospital programs serving veterans and general hospital programs (serving nonveterans) in terms of patients' age, percentage married, disability compensation, duration of pain symptoms, and treatment history. In addition, findings indicated that covariance among pain variables was dissimilar across the four types of pain programs, making it difficult to generalize from one type of setting to another regarding issues such as choice of optimal treatment.