title: A further assessment of the Hall-Rodriguez theory of latent inhibition.
abstract: The Hall-Rodriguez (G. Hall & G. Rodriguez, 2010, Associative and nonassociative processes in latent inhibition: An elaboration of the Pearce-Hall model, in R. E. Lubow & I. Weiner, Eds., Latent inhibition: Data, theories, and applications to schizophrenia, pp. 114-136, Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press) theory of latent inhibition predicts that it will be deepened when a preexposed target stimulus is given additional preexposures in compound with (a) a novel stimulus or (b) another preexposed stimulus, and (c) that deepening will be greater when the compound contains a novel rather than another preexposed stimulus. A series of experiments studied these predictions using a fear conditioning procedure with rats. In each experiment, rats were preexposed to 3 stimuli, 1 (A) taken from 1 modality (visual or auditory) and the remaining 2 (X and Y) taken from another modality (auditory or visual). Then A was compounded with X, and Y was compounded with a novel stimulus (B) taken from the same modality as A. A previous series of experiments (H. T. Leung, A. S. Killcross, & R. F. Westbrook, 2011, Additional exposures to a compound of two preexposed stimuli deepen latent inhibition, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes, Vol. 37, pp. 394-406) compared A with Y, finding that A was more latently inhibited than Y, the opposite of what was predicted. The present experiments confirmed that A was more latently inhibited than Y, showed that this was due to A entering the compound more latently inhibited than Y, and finally, that a comparison of X and Y confirmed the 3 predictions made by the theory.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
authors.forename: Hiu Tin
authors.initials: HT
authors.lastname: Leung
authors.forename: A S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Killcross
authors.forename: R Frederick
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Westbrook
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D003214:Conditioning, Classical / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear / Q000523:psychology; D007266:Inhibition, Psychological; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D013997:Time Factors