Acquisition of superexcitatory properties by and irrelvant background stimulus

Williams, Douglas A., Mehta, Rick, Poworoznyk, Tracy M., Orihel, Jane S., George, David Noel and Pearce, John Martindale ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6121-8650 2002. Acquisition of superexcitatory properties by and irrelvant background stimulus. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 28 (3) , pp. 284-297. 10.1037/0097-7403.28.3.284

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Abstract

Six appetitive conditioning experiments with rats demonstrated that an irrelevant X accompanying a negative patterning discrimination (XA+, XB+, XAB-) acquires extraordinarily high levels of conditioned excitation. Responding to X was similar to that evoked by 2 excitors in combination (Experiment 1) and was greater than responding to a separately reinforced Y (Experiments 2-5). Superexcitatory properties were not acquired by X in the nonpatterning discriminations of Experiments 2-4. Experiment 5 found that A and B, if anything, were weakly excitatory. Making them more strongly excitatory after conditioning did not interfere with retention of the original discrimination (Experiment 6). Results support a counterintuitive prediction of associative theories that, under carefully arranged conditions, irrelevant stimuli may acquire superexcitatory properties.

Item Type:	Article
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Psychology
Publisher:	American Psychological Association
ISSN:	0097-7403
Last Modified:	21 Oct 2022 08:48
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/34412

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