Excitatory backward conditioning in an appetitive conditioned reinforcement preparation with rats.
Four experiments were conducted to examine appetitive backward conditioning in a conditioned reinforcement preparation. In all experiments, off-line classical conditioning was conducted following lever-press training on two levers. Presentations of a sucrose solution by a liquid dipper served as an unconditioned stimulus (US) and two auditory stimuli served as conditioned stimuli (CSs); one was paired with the US in either a forward (Experiment 1a) or a backward (Experiments 1b, 2, and 3) relationship, and the other served as a control CS, which was not paired with the US. In testing, each lever-press response produced a presentation of one of the CSs instead of appetitive reinforcers. The response to a lever was facilitated, compared to the response to another lever, when the response produced the backward CS presentation as well as when it produced the forward CS presentation; that is, the backward CS served as an excitatory conditioned reinforcer.
Urushihara
Kouji
K
Department of Psychology, State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13902-6000, USA. uru@pluto.dti.ne.jp
D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology