Protection from extinction by concurrent presentation of an excitor or an extensively extinguished CS

Résumé 0

"One conditioned taste aversion experiment with rats assessed the impact ofextinguishing a target conditioned stimulus (CS), S, in compound with asecond CS, A, upon conditioned responding elicited by CS S whenpresented alone at test. Following initial conditioning treatment with CSs Aand S, the experiment manipulated number of extinction trials with CS Aalone (i.e., 0, 5, or 10 trials) prior to AS compound treatment. In addition,two control groups received either extinction trials with S alone or noextinction treatment with S. Conditions receiving either 0 or 10 extinctiontrials with CS A prior to nonreinforced exposures to AS showed resultsindicating that aversion elicited by CS S was protected from extinction,whereas a condition receiving 5 extinction trials with CS A prior to AS trialsshowed unprotected extinction of aversion elicited by CS S. Currentassociative models are challenged in accounting for this pattern of results."