Timed excitatory conditioning under zero and negative contingencies.
Rats (rattus norvegicus) anticipated the arrival of a food pellet unconditioned stimulus (US) even when the conditioned stimulus (CS) signaled no overall change or a substantial decrease in the overall rate of US occurrence. Pellet USs were scheduled probabilistically in the intertrial interval at either an equivalent rate (Experiment 1) or a four times higher rate (Experiments 2 and 3) than in the CS, which included one fixed-time target US. Conditioning has been said to involve learning "whether" (contingency) the CS signals a change in the US, and if so, "when" (contiguity) the US is scheduled to arrive. Our results suggest that "when" trumps "whether," challenging the received view that a positive CS-US contingency is necessary for successful conditioning.
Williams
Douglas A
DA
Psychology Department, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. d.williams@uwinnipeg.ca
Lawson
Carla
C
Cook
Rachel
R
Mather
Amber A
AA
Johns
Kenneth W
KW
D000818:Animals; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D051381:Rats; D017207:Rats, Sprague-Dawley; D011930:Reaction Time; D013998:Time Perception