Trial spacing and trial distribution effects in Pavlovian conditioning: Contributions of a comparator mechanism.

Yin, Hao; Barnet, Robert C.; Miller, Ralph R.

doi:10.1037/0097-7403.20.2.123

Cited by 26 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…That any recovery of excitation was observed without further reinforced training with CS-short implies that the low level of excitatory control by CS-short in Experiment 1 and in 2.8 Groups Before-HC and After-HC of Experiment 2 was not mediated by failure of CS-short to enter into excitatory associations with the US. A similar conclusion was recently made by Yin, Barnet, and Miller (1994), who revealed that the detrimental effect of massing all CS-US trials together could be attenuated by posttraining extinction of the conditioning context. This outcome was interpreted to suggest that the deficit in responding to a CS that is massed during training may not reflect a deficit in associative acquisition between the CS and US.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 51%

Trial spacing effects in pavlovian conditioning: A role for local context

Barnet

Grahame

Miller

1995

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Two conditioned lick-suppression experiments with rats were conducted in order to replicate and extend findings by Ewing, Larew, and Wagner (1985). Ewing et al. observed that excitatory responding to a CS paired with a footshock US was attenuated when the ITIs that preceded each CS-US trial were short (60 sec) relative to when they were long (600 sec). This effect was isolated in the influence of the preceding ITI because the preceding ITI was consistently short for one CS and consistently long for a different CS, while the following ITIs were equally often short and long for both CSs. Ewing et al. interpreted this finding in the framework of Wagner's (1981) SOP model. Experiment 1 replicated this trial-spacing effect and demonstrated a similar effect under conditions in which thefoUowing ITI was consistently short for one CSand consistently long for a different CS, while the durations of preceding ITIs were equally often short and long for both CSs. Experiment 2 revealed that the detrimental effect of a short preceding or a short following ITI could be alleviated by extinguishing the conditioning context after CS-US training. The latter observation indicates that the trial-spacing effect is not mediated by a failure of a CS trained with a short ITI to enter into excitatory associations with the US, a conclusion that is not wholly consistent with the SOP model. Finally, we suggest that short pretrial and short posttrial ITIs may enhance the excitatory value of local context cues that modulate responding to a CS.One important factor in the emergence ofexcitatory responding to a conditioned stimulus (CS) paired with an unconditioned stimulus (US) is the duration of the intertrial interval (ITI) that occurs between successive trials of training. A typical finding is that one group exposed to CS-US pairings under training conditions with a short ITI (massed training) shows responding to the CS that is attenuated relative to that of a different group exposed to CS-US pairings under training conditions with a long ITI (spaced training). This "massed-versusspaced"-trials effect has been observed in a variety ofspecies and tasks, including pigeons in auto shaping (Gibbon, Balsam, Locurto, Gold, & Terrace, 1977;Terrace, Gibbon, Farrell, & Baldock, 1975), rats in conditioned suppression (Stein, Sidman, & Brady, 1958), rabbits in nictitating membrane preparations (Salfia, Terry, & Datson, 1975), and humans in eyelid conditioning (Spence & Norris, 1950). However, Support for this research was provided by National Institute of Mental Health Grant 33881. R.C.B. was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada postgraduate scholarship and is now at the Department of Psychology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. N.J.G. was supported by a Dissertation Year Fellowship from SUNY-Binghamton and is now at the Department of Medical Psychology, Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, OR. Thanks are extended to Lisa Fiori and Hua Yin for comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We a...

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 51%

Trial spacing effects in pavlovian conditioning: A role for local context

Barnet

Grahame

Miller

1995

Animal Learning & Behavior

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“…In fact, it is certainly not equivalent in terms of the dynamics of learning and memory (e.g., Roberts, 1974; Adams, 1982; Yin et al, 1994). …”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

European starlings unriddle the ambiguous-cue problem

Vasconcelos

Monteiro

2014

Front. Psychol.

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The ambiguous-cue problem is deceptively simple. It involves two concurrently trained simultaneous discriminations (known as PA and NA trials), but only three stimuli. Stimulus A is common to both discriminations, but serves as non-reinforced stimulus (S-) on PA trials and as reinforced stimulus (S+) on NA trials. Typically, animals’ accuracy is lower on PA trials—the ambiguous-cue effect. We conducted two experiments with European starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) using Urcuioli and Michalek’s (2007, Psychon B Rev 14, 658–662) experimental manipulations as a springboard to test the predictions of two of the most important theoretical accounts of the effect: the interfering cue hypothesis and value transfer theory. Both experiments included two groups of birds, one trained with a regular ambiguous-cue problem (Group Continuous) and another trained with partial reinforcement on PA trials (Group PA-Partial). The experiments differed only in the number of sessions (18 vs. 36) and daily trials (360 vs. 60). As previously observed, we found faster acquisition on NA trials than on PA trials in both experiments, but by the end of training PA performance was surprisingly high, such that no ambiguous-cue effect was present in Group Continuous of either experiment. The effect was still present in both PA-Partial groups, but to a smaller degree than expected. These findings are inconsistent with the literature, in particular with the results of Urcuioli and Michalek (2007) with pigeons, and question the aforementioned theoretical accounts as complete explanations of the ambiguous-cue effect. In our view, to achieve such high levels of accuracy on PA trials, starlings must have attended to configural (i.e., contextual) cues, thus differentiating stimulus A when presented on PA trials from stimulus A when presented on NA trials. A post hoc simulation of a reinforcement-based configural model supported our assertion.

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“…With more temporally spaced trials, the associations between the context and the CS and US should be weakened by extinction that occurs during the intertrial interval (for evidence of the context's role in the trial-massing effect, see e.g., Yin et al, 1994). Thus, for an elementally trained CS, the strengths of Links 2 (CScontext) and 3 (context-US) are greater when trials are temporally massed.…”

Section: Trial Massing and Overshadowingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Determinants of cue interactions

Wheeler

Miller

2008

Behavioural Processes

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In a Pavlovian conditioning situation, there are many training variables that may affect responding to a conditioned stimulus (CS), such as contiguity, contingency, and the presence of other CSs. This review describes recent experiments that show that some manipulations that usually decrease responding to a CS may have the opposite effect when they are combined with other normally pernicious manipulations. A theoretical framework that explains these so-called counteraction effects is provided. The apparent boundary conditions on the effects and limitations of the theory are discussed.

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Trial spacing and trial distribution effects in Pavlovian conditioning: Contributions of a comparator mechanism.

Cited by 26 publications

References 22 publications

Trial spacing effects in pavlovian conditioning: A role for local context

Trial spacing effects in pavlovian conditioning: A role for local context

European starlings unriddle the ambiguous-cue problem

Determinants of cue interactions

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