title: Serial order of conditional stimuli as a discriminative cue for Pavlovian conditioning.
abstract: The serial order in which events occur can be a signal for different outcomes and therefore might be a determinant of how an animal should respond. In this report, we propose a novel design for studying serial order learning in Pavlovian conditioning. In both Experiments 1a and 1b, hungry rats were trained with successively presented pairs of auditory and visual stimuli (e.g., A --> B) using four different stimuli (A-D). Four orders were paired with food (A --> B, B --> C, C --> D, D --> A) while the reversals were extinguished (B --> A, C --> B, D --> C, A --> D). An analysis of responding from the second element of each pair showed that the rats discriminated trial types that preceded food from those that did not. A replication of the effect using a completely counterbalanced design is described in Experiment 1b. These results suggest that rats can use the serial or temporal order of two sequentially presented non-overlapping elements as the basis for discrimination. Two associative accounts are suggested as possible mechanisms for solving the discrimination.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
authors.forename: Robin A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.forename: Esther
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Mondragón
authors.forename: Victoria A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Murphy
authors.forename: Nathalie
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Fouquet
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D003463:Cues; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D014796:Visual Perception