Food as a contextual cue in counterconditioning experiments: Is there a counterconditioning process?

Abstract

In three experiments, counterconditioning was found to reduce fear less effectively than extinction. In Experiments 1 and 2, the resistance to extinction of avoidance was greater if food was given during extinction of fear to the CS than if no food was given, even when exposure to the CS and numbers of food and no food confinement trials were equated. It is suggested that these results could be attributed to contextual control of fear extinction by the food cue and/or to frustration produced by removing food for the counterconditioning group. Experiment 3 also found counterconditioning to be less effective than extinction and provided evidence that this difference occurs because of contextual control of fear extinction by the food cue. Measuring conditioned suppression of licking, in a test with no food present, less fear was shown if no food had been present during fear extinction, and greater fear was shown if no food had been present during fear conditioning. These results indicate that food is an important part of the context controlling fear and fear extinction. It is suggested that there may be no unique counterconditioning process. Rather, when counterconditioning procedures are employed, rules governing interference paradigms in general may apply. Thus, in a test for fear following counterconditioning, fear will be shown to the extent the test situation is similar to that in which fear conditioning occurred rather than that in which fear reduction occurred.

Counterconditioned fear responses exhibit greater renewal than extinguished fear responses

“…That is, the counterconditioned CS was subject to more renewal than the extinguished CS. Moreover, the within-subject design means that the difference between the test levels of freezing to the counterconditioned and extinguished CSs was not due to variations in processing of context B, and therefore, the extent to which rats discriminated context B from the conditioning/test context A (e.g., Capaldi et al 1983).…”

Counterconditioning of memory in rats

“…Some studies have found this counterconditioning procedure to be more effective than an extinction exposure (Hunsicker et al, 1973;E. H. Wilson & Dinsmoor, 1970), but others have not (Delprato & Jackson, 1973), and some have even concluded that there is no bona fide counterconditioning process (Capaldi et al, 1983). At least three different explanations have been offered to account for the failures to observe a counterconditioning effect.…”

“…This, of course, would lessen the likelihood of obtaining the counterconditioning effect. A second potential problem resulting from the traditional counterconditioning procedure is the possible introduction of frustration at test (see Capaldi et al, 1983). Frustration may be introduced if subjects form an association between the counterconditioning agent (e.g., food) and the location at which forced exposure to the fear stimulus occurs.…”

“…Thus, subjects in the counterconditioning group in this type of experiment may continue responding to the tone because of frustration-related increases in activity levels, not because the counterconditioning process itself is ineffective. A third methodological complication with the traditional counterconditioning procedure is context-specific extinction (Capaldi et al, 1983). Bouton and Bolles (1979) clearly demonstrated that extinction of an avoidance response in rats was specific to the context in which extinction took place; that is, the subjects showed little evidence of extinction if extinction and test trials were administered in two distinctively different environmental contexts.…”

“…A recent study (Capaldi, Vivieros, & Campbell, 1983) even challenged whether counterconditioning can be considered as a bona fide phenomenon. Admittedly, there are, as pointed out by Capaldi et al (1983) and G. T. Wilson and Davison (1971), several potentially confounding characteristics of the typical counterconditioning procedure. These troublesome characteristics, however, could simply make it more difficult to observe counterconditioning and need not apply at all to the actual occurrence of this phenomenon.…”