Disrupting the conditioned stimulus preexposure effect in flavor-aversion learning: effects of interoceptive distractor manipulations.
Rats exposed to a flavor prior to a conditioning trial involving that stimulus learn a significantly diminished flavor aversion relative to nonpreexposed control animals. A series of four experiments investigated the ability of the conditioned stimulus (CS) preexposure effect to be disrupted by the introduction of a distractor flavor stimulus between the preexposure and conditioning episodes. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the preexposure effect could be reduced by a distractor presented immediately following the preexposure. In Experiment 2, it was discovered that a novel distractor was more effective than a familiar distractor, even though both stimuli were sensorily equivalent. Experiment 3 further analyzed the distractor effect and demonstrated that the magnitude of disruption was more pronounced with immediate than with delayed (3 hr) distractor manipulations. Finally, Experiment 4 assessed the effects of the distractor in the absence of CS preexposure. The relation of the results from these experiments to general information theory is discussed.
D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004326:Drinking; D005260:Female; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D008094:Lithium / Q000506:poisoning; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D013649:Taste
D008094:Lithium