Control of conditional discrimination performance by CS-evoked event representations

Abstract

The ability of visual CSs previously paired with flavored substances to substitute for those substances as conditional discriminative cues was examined in two Pavlovian appetitive conditioning experiments using rat subjects. In Experiment 1, a visual stimulus was first paired with the delivery of a sucrose solution. Then the rats were trained in conditional discrimination tasks in which sucrose delivery alone served as a conditional cue signaling whether or not a subsequent tone would be reinforced with food pellets. Subjects rapidly acquired discriminative performance to the tones, especially in a feature-negative condition in which sucrose delivery signaled when the tone would not be reinforced. In a subsequent test in which neither food nor sucrose was delivered, presentation of the visual CS also controlled discriminative performance to subsequently presented tones. Experiment 2 showed the ability of a visual CS to substitute for a flavored substance as a conditional cue to be highly stimulus specific. Experiment 2 also showed that a flavored substance was less effective as a conditional cue when it was made to be expected by preceding it with a previously associated visual signal than when it was made to be surprising by preceding it with a visual stimulus signaling another flavored liquid. These results indicate that CS-evoked representations of events can substitute for those events themselves in the control of previously established conditional discrimination performance.

Amount of training effects in representationmediated food aversion learning: No evidence of a role for associability changes

“…These results join others in showing that CS-activated food representations may substitute for food itself in a variety of functions, including the generation of CRs (Holland & Straub, 1979), setting the occasion for responding to other CSs (Holland & Forbes, 1982a), the extinction of previously established food aversions (Holland & Forbes, 1982b), and overshadowing or potentiating conditioning of aversions to other stimuli (Holland, 1983).…”

Some tests of the anticipatory mediated generalization model of acquired sample equivalence in pigeons’ many-to-one matching

“…This retrospective account, in which "a" and "c" represent the retrieved representations of the A and C samples, respectively, appears in the bottom half of Table 4. In order to predict transfer of performance to the C-D test relations, this account must assume that the remembered version of a sample not currently present is similar to the actual sample itself, an assumption supported by other data (see, e.g., Holland & Forbes, 1982). The actual A-D relations learned by Group First during Phase 2, then, should permit the retrieved representation of A ("a") by the C samples in testing to cue the D choices (i.e., "a"-D is very much like A-D).…”

Formation of Transitivity in Conditional Matching to Sample by Pigeons

“…hedonic or nonhedonic, with reinforcement or without reinforcement, whether requiring stimulus-specific response or not, classical or instrumental conditioning). Using hedonic stimuli, the derived relations have been demonstrated for nonhuman subjects (Edwards, Jagielo, Zentall, & Hogan, 1982;Holland, 1981;Holland & Forbes, 1982;Nakagawa, 1986Nakagawa, ,1992Richards, 1988;Steirn, Jackson-Smith, & Zentall, 1991; Vaughan, 1988;Zentall, Sherburne, & Steirn, 1992; Zentall, Steirn, Sherburne, & Urcuioli, 1991). For example, Stern et al (1991) trained pigeons in three successive phases using an A-type paradigm.…”