More rapid associative change with retraining than with initial training.
Retraining was compared with initial acquisition in 4 magazine approach experiments with rats and 1 autoshaping experiment with pigeons. The levels of performance were matched prior to reinforcement and nonreinforcement for stimuli with a history of both training and extinction and stimuli with only a minimal history of training. Under these conditions, a previously extinguished stimulus was more vulnerable both to the incremental effects of reinforcement and to the decremental effects of nonreinforcement compared with a stimulus that had only been minimally trained.
Rescorla
Robert A
RA
Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. rescorla@cattell.psych.upenn.edu
D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D010856:Columbidae; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005108:Extinction, Psychological; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D013663:Teaching