Associations to contextual stimuli as a determinant of long-term habituation.
A series of experiments was performed to determine whether long-term habituation of the acoustic startle response in rats is mediated by conditioned associations between contextual cues and the test stimulus. Experiment 1 established parameters yielding demonstrable long-term habituation of the startle response. Experiment 2 attempted to overshadow the hypothesized associations to contextual cues by providing a more reliable predictor of the acoustic stimulus. Experiment 3 investigated the effect of changes in contextual cues on long-term habituation. Experiment 4 provided treatments designed to extinguish the hypothesized associations between the context and the habituated stimulus. Experiment 5 sought latent inhibition of the hypothesized association between the contextual cues and the acoustic stimulus. The results of these experiments uniformly failed to support an associative model of long-term habituation of the startle response, but they are consistent with a nonassociative model emphasizing habituation to the entire experimental situation rather than exclusively to the iterated stimulus.
D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D001307:Auditory Perception; D003463:Cues; D005795:Generalization, Stimulus; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D013216:Reflex, Startle; D012153:Retention, Psychology