Protection from extinction provided by a conditioned inhibitor

McConnell, Bridget L.; Miller, Ralph R.

doi:10.3758/lb.38.1.68

Cited by 19 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…These effects on fear extinction extend the parallels between appetitive excitors and aversive inhibitors on the one hand, and appetitive inhibitors and aversive excitors on the other hand. According to the model, the two CSs within each pair (appetitive excitor/aversive inhibitor and appetitive inhibitor/aversive excitor) exert the same effect on fear extinction, and the two pairs exert the opposite effect: The appetitive excitor and the aversive inhibitor impair (e.g., McConnell and Miller 2010), while the appetitive inhibitor and the aversive excitor enhance extinction of their fear-eliciting associate in a nonshocked compound (e.g., Rescorla 2006;Leung et al 2012). These effects occur because nonshocked presentations of a compound composed of a feareliciting CS and either an appetitive excitor or an aversive inhibitor elicit a net affective value close to zero: the CS previously paired with shock excites an aversive state whereas the appetitive excitor or the aversive inhibitor excites an appetitive state.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A CS that has signaled the nonoccurrence of footshock (an aversive inhibitor) protects a separately conditioned fear CS from extinction when the two are presented in a nonshocked compound (e.g., McConnell and Miller 2010). The present experiment examines whether a CS that has signaled the presence of sucrose (an appetitive excitor) likewise protects a separately conditioned fear CS from extinction across nonshocked presentations of the compound.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If the appetitive excitor, A, entered Stage 2 commanding more attention than the control stimulus, B, as anticipated by one type of theory (e.g., Mackintosh 1975), it should have been more effective in reducing both conditioning to X in Experiment 1 and extinction of X in Experiment 2; conversely, if A commanded less attention than B, as could be assumed by a second type of theory (e.g., Pearce and Hall 1980), it should have been less effective in overshadowing conditioning to X in Experiment 1 and extinction of X in Experiment 2. Instead, the contrasting effect of an appetitive excitor on acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear to X can be interpreted to mean that such a CS functions like an aversive inhibitor, enhancing fear of a novel CS (Rescorla 1971) and blocking extinction of an already conditioned fear CS (McConnell and Miller 2010).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Whereas the presence of an already conditioned CS blocks acquisition of conditioned fear to a target CS, it has been shown to enhance extinction of fear to an already conditioned CS (Leung and Westbrook 2010;see also Wagner and Rescorla 1972). Conversely, whereas the presence of an aversive inhibitor enhances fear conditioning to a target CS, it has been shown to impair extinction of fear to an already conditioned CS (Soltysik et al 1983;McConnell and Miller 2010).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, it remains to be determined whether this parallel in the effects of an appetitive excitor and a fear inhibitor extends to the case of fear extinction. That is, whether an appetitive excitor functions like a conditioned fear inhibitor (e.g., McConnell and Miller 2010) to impair or block extinction of a fear CS across nonshocked exposures to the compound.…”

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confidence: 99%

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An appetitive conditioned stimulus enhances fear acquisition and impairs fear extinction

2016

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Four experiments used between-and within-subject designs to examine appetitive -aversive interactions in rats. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of an excitatory appetitive conditioned stimulus (CS) on acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear. In Experiment 1, a CS shocked in a compound with an appetitive excitor (i.e., a stimulus previously paired with sucrose) underwent greater fear conditioning than a CS shocked in a compound with a neutral stimulus. Conversely, in Experiment 2, a CS extinguished in a compound with an appetitive excitor underwent less extinction than a CS extinguished in a compound with a neutral stimulus. Experiments 3 and 4 compared the amount of fear conditioning to an appetitive excitor and a familiar but neutral target CS when the compound of these stimuli was paired with shock. In each experiment, more fear accrued to the appetitive excitor than to the neutral CS. These results show that an appetitive excitor influences acquisition and extinction of conditioned fear to a neutral CS and itself undergoes a greater associative change than the neutral CS across compound conditioning. They are discussed with respect to the role of motivational information in regulating an associative change in appetitive -aversive interactions.Pavlovian conditioned fear in laboratory rodents is widely used to study the substrates of learning and memory in the mammalian brain. One reason for the use of this model is that conditioned fear is thought to contribute to anxiety disorders, such as panic, posttraumatic stress, social, and specific phobias (Rosen and Schulkin 1998). A second reason is that extinction of this fear is a goal of exposure-based treatments of these disorders (VanElzakker et al. 2014). A standard protocol to produce conditioned fear in rodents consists in pairings of a relatively innocuous stimulus, such as a noise, with an innate source of danger, typically brief but aversive foot shock. One or a few such pairings produces an excitatory association between the noise [conditioned stimulus (CS)] and the aversive foot shock [unconditioned stimulus (US)]. The consequence of this association is that subsequent presentations of the CS elicit defensive responses (immobility or freezing, potentiated startle, analgesia, changes in heart rate and blood pressure) indicative of fear in people. Extinction consists in repeated presentations of the CS in the absence of the US. Fear responses decline across these presentations and eventually cease. This decline and cessation of fear responses to the CS is not due to the progressive erasure of its association with the US. Fear restoration phenomena such as renewal, reinstatement, and spontaneous recovery show that at least some of the original CS-US association survives extinction despite the fact that the CS failed to elicit fear responses. These phenomena imply that extinction involves new learning that inhibits retrieval of the CS-US association and/or its expression in fear responses (Delamater and Westbrook 2014).A question of both theore...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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An appetitive conditioned stimulus enhances fear acquisition and impairs fear extinction

2016

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Reactivated memories compete for expression after Pavlovian extinction

Laborda

Miller

2012

Behavioural Processes

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We view the response decrement resulting from extinction treatment as an interference effect, in which the reactivated memory from acquisition competes with the reactivated memory from extinction for behavioral expression. For each of these memories, reactivation is proportional to both the strength of the stimulus-outcome association and the quality of the facilitatory cues for that association which are present at test. Here we review basic extinction and recovery-from-extinction phenomena, showing how these effects are explicable in this associative interference framework. Moreover, this orientation has and continues to dictate efficient manipulations for minimizing recovery from extinction. This in turn suggests procedures that might reduce relapse from exposure therapy for a number of psychological disorders. Some of these manipulations enhance the facilitatory cues from extinction that are present at test, others strengthen the extinction association (i.e., CS-no outcome), and yet others seem to work by a combination of these two processes.

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On the differences in degree of renewal produced by the different renewal designs

Polack

Laborda

Miller

2013

Behavioural Processes

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This paper addresses sources contributing to the differences in the degree of recovery from extinction observed with different renewal paradigms. In two lick suppression experiments with rats, we assessed the role of the associative status of the acquisition context in both the weakness of AAC renewal and the sometimes observed weaker renewal resulting from an ABC design relative to an ABA design. In Experiment 1, we observed that AAC renewal relative to an AAA control group was small unless Context A had undergone associative deflation (i.e., extinction of Context A). Deflation of Context A not only decreased behavioral control by the CS in the AAA condition, but increased it in the AAC condition, thereby implicating a comparator process in addition to associative summation between the CS and test context. In Experiment 2, an excitatory acquisition context was found to enhance the difference between ABC and ABA renewal. Associative deflation of the acquisition context decreased ABA renewal more than ABC renewal. Thus, the associative value of the acquisition context (A) was more positively related to the level of renewal when the target CS (X) was tested in this context than when it was tested in a neutral but equally familiar context (C), consistent with the frequently observed greater renewal in an ABA condition than an ABC condition arising from associative summation of the CS and test context. These findings demonstrate that the excitatory status of the acquisition context influences the observed degree of renewal.

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Protection from extinction provided by a conditioned inhibitor

Cited by 19 publications

References 40 publications

An appetitive conditioned stimulus enhances fear acquisition and impairs fear extinction

An appetitive conditioned stimulus enhances fear acquisition and impairs fear extinction

Reactivated memories compete for expression after Pavlovian extinction

On the differences in degree of renewal produced by the different renewal designs

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