title: When more is less: extending training of the blocking association following compound training attenuates the blocking effect.
abstract: Three conditioned lick suppression experiments with rats were performed to assess the influence, following compound training of two stimuli (A and X) with the same outcome (AX-O trials), of extending training of the blocking association (i.e., A-O) on responding to the target stimulus (X) at test. In Experiment 1, backward blocking was attenuated when the blocking association was extensively trained. Experiment 2 showed that forward blocking was also attenuated by extensive further training of the blocking association following the AX-O trials. Experiment 3 contrasted candidate explanations of the results of Experiments 1 and 2 and demonstrated that these results are consistent with the framework of the extended comparator hypothesis (Denniston, Savastano, & Miller, 2001).
authors.affiliation: University of Sevile, Seville, Spain.
authors.forename: Oskar
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Pineño
authors.forename: Kouji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Urushihara
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Stout
authors.forename: Jessica
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fuss
authors.forename: Ralph R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Miller
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001244:Association; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D013663:Teaching