The spatio-temporal dynamics of conditioned behavior: First-order and higher-order conditioning

Honey, Rob ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6870-1880, Dwyer, Dominic ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8069-5508 and Navarro, Victor 2025. The spatio-temporal dynamics of conditioned behavior: First-order and higher-order conditioning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Learning and Cognition 10.1037/xan0000392

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Abstract

Pavlovian conditioning procedures generate spatially and temporally distinct behaviors. For example, after rats have received pairings of a lever with food, they approach the food well during the lever (called goal-tracking) and interact with it (called sign-tracking); with these two spatially distinct behaviors being distributed differently across the temporal duration of the lever. Experiment 1 assessed the development of these spatio-temporally defined behaviors during first-order conditioning, as a function of the sequence in which the lever and food occurred (lever→food or food→lever) and the interval between them (1s or 11s). In Experiment 2, the same rats received higher-order conditioning trials in which an auditory stimulus was paired with the lever and the emergence of goal-tracking to the auditory stimulus was assessed. The results of Experiments 1 and 2 revealed dissociations between where and when learning was evident during first- and higher-order conditioning, underscoring the need for models of Pavlovian conditioning to explain both the nature and timing of different conditioned responses.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Schools > Psychology
Publisher:	American Psychological Association
ISSN:	2329-8456
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	24 February 2025
Date of Acceptance:	21 February 2025
Last Modified:	27 Feb 2025 12:30
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176416

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