Pavlovian conditioning of sexual arousal: Unsuccessful attempts with an ejaculatory US

Abstract

Although it is commonly assumed that ejaculation is the effective reinforcer for sexual behavior, there is little evidence for its role in the establishment of any Pavlovian conditioned arousal responses. This report includes three experiments (with rats) that used ejaculation as the US. In the first, a paired conditioning group was compared with a random control; in the second, conditions were varied in testing to look for conditioning to background cues; in the third, extinction trials were given in an attempt to provide a more sensitive test for any conditioned response. There was no evidence for conditioning in any of these cases, leading us to question the role of ejaculation.The belief that learning plays a major role in the control of sexual arousal seems to be almost universal in psychology. For example, Bermant and Davidson (1974, conditioned in this manner, two such groups should show an increasing divergence over trials.p. 4) said that "it is clear that the sexual behavior of some Method species, in particular nonhuman primates and man, isSubjects. This experiment used 20 male Long-Evans hooded rats, modifiable through the operation of environmental conapproximately 100 days old, with no sexual experience prior to the experimental situation. Also used were 60 ovariectomized females of the tingencies. ' , same strain. All animals were housed in individual cages in a room with Still, the evidence is remarkably weak for an assumpreversed light-dark cycles, and had free access to food and water.tion of such strength and commonality. A few studies have Apparatus. Mating trials were conducted in arena boxes 60 x 60 shown some limited effects of Pavlovian contingencies x 50 cm high. Three sides and the bottom were of plywood painted flat black; the fronts were of removable Plexiglas, and the tops were in copulatory situations (e.g., Farris, 1967). However, open. The arenas were located in a dimly lit small room.reliable evidence for any sizable CR based on sexualProcedure. The male rats were divided randomly into experimental arousal in mammalian species is not readily available.(Group E) and control (Group C) groups, each with 10 animals. SubseMost commonly it is assumed that conditioning develops quently, two males were dropped from Group C because of failure to through the pairing of situational cues with ejaculation.

Pavlovian conditioning of sexual arousal: First- and second-order effects.

“…However, this experiment by itself has several limitations. Given the evidence for conditioning in this study with nonconsummatory sexual interactions, it becomes important to make a more direct comparison with the ejaculatory US used in previous unsuccessful attempts to demonstrate the effects of conditioning in our laboratory (Zamble et al, 1985), but several small procedural differences make direct comparisons difficult.…”

“…However, a variety of experiments in our laboratory have failed to provide evidence for conditioning when a conditioned stimulus (CS) signals a bout of copulation ending in ejaculation (Zamble, Hadad, & Mitchell, 1985). Although there were always improvements in the speed of copulation across trials, such changes did not differ across treatment groups, and they also were not affected by conditioning manipulations such as extinction or CS alterations.…”

Pavlovian conditioning of sexual arousal: Parametric and background manipulations.

“…If a male failed to copulate on a total of three experience trials or on two consecutive trials, he was eliminated from the experiment. The choice of five copulation experiences (or six including the pretest) followed from the finding that the male rat's sexual performance reaches asymptote after about six opportunities to copulate to ejaculation (Sachs & Barfield, 1976; Zamble, Hadad, & Mitchell, 1985). Thus, for these three groups performance on the posttests should not exhibit any further gains after conditioning owing to practice alone.…”

“…Some recent experiments from our laboratory have provided behavioral evidence for the conditioning of sexual arousal by excitatory Pavlovian processes (Zamble, Hadad, & Mitchell, 1985; Zamble, Hadad, Mitchell, & Cutmore, 1985). Unconsummated sexual arousal functioned as an effective unconditioned response (UCR) in classical conditioning, just as it had been found to function as an effective reinforcer in instrumental learning (Sheffield, Wulff, & Backer, 1951; Whalen, 1961).…”

Pavlovian conditioning with sexually relevant UCS: Which is the necessary UCR?

“…Classical conditioning of sexual responses in male rodents has attracted less attention, and the limited data available are contradictory. Copulation to ejaculation failed to promote conditioning in male rats (Zamble, Hadad, & Mitchell, 1985), whereas male mice vocalized in response to a perfume that previously had been carried by a female during a few sessions of brief interaction (Nyby, Whitney, Schmitz, & Dizinno, 1978). Because vocalization is an unconditioned response to females and because perfume by itself does not produce vocalizations, it was concluded that the perfume had acquired the capacity to elicit vocalizations through conditioning.…”