Experimental renewal in human participants.
Two experiments with human participants are presented that differentiate renewal from other behavioral effects that can produce a response after extinction. Participants played a video game and learned to suppress their behavior when sensor stimuli predicted an attack. Contexts (A, B, & C) were provided by fictitious galaxies where the game play took place. In Experiment 1, participants who received conditioning in A, extinction in B, and testing in A showed some context specificity of conditioning during extinction and a recovery of suppression on test. Experiment 2 demonstrated recovery of extinguished responding when participants were conditioned in A, extinguished in B, and tested in C, a third, neutral context. The experiment also demonstrated that the context of extinction did not control performance by becoming inhibitory. Results are discussed in terms of mechanisms that can produce a response recovery after extinction. The experiments demonstrated a renewal effect: a response recovery that was not attributable to the contexts acting as simple conditioned stimuli and is the first work with human participants to conclusively do so.
Nelson
James Byron
JB
Department of Basic Psychological Processes and Development, Avenida de Tolosa, 70, University of the Basque Country, San Sebastin, Spain. drjbn@hotmail.com
Sanjuan
María del Carmen
Mdel C
Vadillo-Ruiz
Sandra
S
Pérez
Joana
J
León
Samuel P
SP
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology*; D005108:Extinction, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011897:Random Allocation; D018910:Video Games; D055815:Young Adult