Learned Changes in Stimulus Representations (A Personal History)

Hall, Geoffrey

doi:10.1017/s113874160000648x

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 20 publications

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“…For example, Honey and Hall (1989) reported that conditioned suppression generalized more readily from one CS to another if both stimuli had been previously associated with the same US (food pellets). Their findings indicate that generalization between two physically different stimuli can be increased if they are associated with a common event—in effect, by increasing the number of elements they share (e.g., Hall, 2007). Such acquired equivalence could contribute to secondary extinction because X and Y are associated with a common US during the initial conditioning phase.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Secondary extinction in Pavlovian fear conditioning

Vurbic

Bouton

2011

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Pavlov (1927/1960) reported that following the conditioning of several stimuli, extinction of one conditioned stimulus (CS) attenuated responding to others that had not undergone direct extinction. However, this secondary extinction effect has not been widely replicated in the contemporary literature. In three conditioned suppression experiments with rats, we further explored the phenomenon. In Experiment 1, we asked whether secondary extinction is more likely to occur with target CSs that have themselves undergone some prior extinction. A robust secondary extinction effect was obtained with a nonextinguished target CS. Experiment 2 showed that extinction of one CS was sufficient to reduce renewal of a second CS when it was tested in a neutral (nonextinction) context. In Experiment 3, secondary extinction was observed in groups that initially received intermixed conditioning trials with the target and nontarget CSs, but not in groups that received conditioning of the two CSs in separate sessions. The results are consistent with the hypothesis that CSs must be associated with a common temporal context during conditioning for secondary extinction to occur.Keywords Classical conditioning . Fear conditioning . Extinction . Secondary extinction . GeneralizationIn Pavlovian conditioning, a neutral cue acquires the ability to elicit a response as a result of pairings with a biologically relevant unconditional stimulus (US). The response to this cue, or conditional stimulus (CS), can later be extinguished by repeatedly presenting the CS alone. Pavlov (1927Pavlov ( /1960 reported that following conditioning of multiple CSs, extinction of one CS also attenuated responding to others that had not undergone any extinction. For example, his associate Babkin demonstrated the effect in at least one dog by first pairing three distinct stimuli (a buzzer, a metronome pulse, and tactile stimulation) with a US that elicited salivation. Immediately following conditioning, the metronome was presented for several trials without the US until the salivary response was extinguished. When the other two CSs were then tested (one CS of the same modality and one CS that was highly dissimilar), the responses to them were greatly attenuated even though neither CS had undergone any extinction. The finding that extinction of one CS can decrease responding to a second CS is known as secondary extinction (Pavlov, 1927(Pavlov, /1960 Although Pavlov's (1927Pavlov's ( /1960 findings are theoretically significant, over the years there has been only scattered interest in the secondary extinction phenomenon. Moreover, the contemporary literature contains several failures to observe the effect. The relevant contemporary research has been conducted mainly in fear conditioning. In three conditioned suppression experiments reported by Richards and Sargent (1983), a modest secondary extinction effect was found in the first experiment but was not replicated in the subsequent two. Two other reports using the conditioned suppression preparation failed ...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Secondary extinction in Pavlovian fear conditioning

Vurbic

Bouton

2011

Learn Behav

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Do sheep (Ovis aries) categorize plant species according to botanical family?

Ginane¹,

Dumont²

2011

Anim Cogn

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The ability of grazing herbivores to assign food types to categories by relying on certain relevant criteria could considerably reduce cognitive demand and increase their foraging efficiency when selecting among many different plant items. Grasses and legumes differ functionally in vegetation communities as well as in nutritive value. We aimed to determine whether sheep can generalize an aversion they learnt for a grass or a legume species to another species of the same functional type and consequently whether botanical family is a potential level of categorization. Over four successive weeks, 12 lambs were conditioned against either a freshly cut grass (tall fescue-Festuca arundinacea, N = 6) or legume species (sainfoin-Onobrychis viciifolia, N = 6) using a negative post-ingestive stimulus (lithium chloride) on day 1. Preference of all lambs between another grass (cocksfoot-Dactylis glomerata) and another legume (alfalfa-Medicago sativa) was assessed on day 3 by measuring their relative consumptions. Preference for alfalfa progressively became lower for lambs that were conditioned against sainfoin than against tall fescue, indicating that lambs generalized the aversion between species along some perceptual gradient and classed the considered grasses and legumes in distinct categories. Beyond this original result, the question now is to identify which specific plant characteristics or functional traits the animals rely on in order to form categories.

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Learned Changes in Stimulus Representations (A Personal History)

Cited by 2 publications

References 20 publications

Secondary extinction in Pavlovian fear conditioning

Secondary extinction in Pavlovian fear conditioning

Do sheep (Ovis aries) categorize plant species according to botanical family?

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