title: Appetitive context conditioning proactively, but transiently, interferes with expression of counterconditioned context fear.
abstract: Four experiments used rats to study appetitive-aversive transfer. Rats trained to eat a palatable food in a distinctive context and shocked in that context ate and did not freeze when tested 1 d later but froze and did not eat when tested 14 d later. These results were associatively mediated (Experiments 1 and 2), observed when rats were or were not food deprived (Experiments 1 and 2), and were not due to latent inhibition (Experiment 3). In contrast, rats trained to eat in the context and shocked there 13 d later froze and did not eat when tested 1 d after the shocked exposure. However, rats that received an additional eating session in the context 1 d before the shocked exposure ate and did not freeze when tested 1 d after the shocked exposure (Experiment 4). The results show that appetitive conditioning transiently interferes with aversive conditioning. They are discussed in terms of a weak context-shock association becoming stronger with the lapse of time (so-called fear incubation) or of the interference by the context-food association becoming weaker with the lapse of time.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia.
authors.forename: Nathan M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Holmes
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW 2052, Australia f.westbrook@unsw.edu.au.
authors.forename: R Frederick
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Westbrook
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D004597:Electroshock; D005239:Fear; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar