title: ABA renewal is greater when extinction occurs in the same context as cue pre-exposure.
abstract: Renewal has been observed in several protocols. One, termed ABA, trains a conditioned stimulus (CS) in one context, A, extinguishes the CS in a second context, B, and tests either in A or B. We used between- and within-subjects designs in three experiments with rats to study how a history of cue pre-exposure affects extinction and renewal of conditioned fear responses (freezing). In each experiment, a stimulus was pre-exposed in either context B or context C, paired with an aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) in a third context, A, extinguished in B, and finally tested in A. Freezing declined at the same rate when extinction occurred in the same or a different context as pre-exposure in between-subjects designs (Experiments 1 and 2), but declined faster when extinction and pre-exposure occurred in the same than in a different context in a within-subjects design (Experiment 3). In each experiment, renewal of freezing responses in the conditioning context, A, was greater when subjects were tested with the CS extinguished in its pre-exposure context than with the CS extinguished outside its pre-exposure context. The results were interpreted to mean that what was learned about the context-stimulus relation in pre-exposure enhanced control by that context over what was learned in extinction, thereby enhancing renewal when the rats were returned to the conditioning context for testing.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology.
authors.forename: Nathan M
authors.initials: NM
authors.lastname: Holmes
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology.
authors.forename: R Frederick
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Westbrook
mesh_terms: D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D003463:Cues; D004597:Electroshock / Q000009:adverse effects; D005108:Extinction, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D005239:Fear; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D012193:Reversal Learning / Q000502:physiology*