title: The fate of redundant cues during blocking and a simple discrimination.
abstract: In each of three experiments animals received blocking, A+ AX+, in which food was always presented after one stimulus, A, that was occasionally accompanied by another stimulus, X. They also received a simple discrimination, AX+ BX-, in which the presence and absence of food was signaled by two compounds that contained one unique cue, A or B, and one common cue, X. In each of these designs, X can be said to be redundant relative to A as a signal for food. Test trials at the end of training revealed that responding during X was stronger after blocking than after the simple discrimination. These results contradict predictions from theories of learning that assume changes in associative strength of a stimulus are determined by a global error term based on the outcome predicted by all the stimuli that are present for a conditioning trial. The results are interpreted, instead, by assuming either that animals store a memory of every trial to which they have been exposed, or that learning is governed by an error term based on the significance of individual stimuli.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology.
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Pearce
authors.forename: Jemma C
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Dopson
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Haselgrove
authors.forename: Guillem R
authors.initials: GR
authors.lastname: Esber
mesh_terms: D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D003118:Color Perception; D010856:Columbidae; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004193:Discrimination Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D005108:Extinction, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D005508:Food Deprivation / Q000502:physiology; D008297:Male; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D051381:Rats; D011930:Reaction Time