title: Contextual control of conditioning is not affected by extinction in a behavioral task with humans.
abstract: The Attentional Theory of Context Processing (ATCP) states that extinction will arouse attention to contexts resulting in learning becoming contextually controlled. Participants learned to suppress responding to colored sensors in a video-game task where contexts were provided by different gameplay backgrounds. Four experiments assessed the contextual control of simple excitatory learning acquired to a test stimulus (T) after (Exp. 1) or during (Exp. 2-4) extinction of another stimulus (X). Experiment 1 produced no evidence of contextual control of T, though renewal to X was present both at the time T was trained and tested. In Experiment 2 no contextual control of T was evident when X underwent extensive conditioning and extinction. In Experiment 3 no contextual control of T was evident after extensive conditioning and extinction of X, and renewal to X was present. In Experiment 4 contextual control was evident to T, but it neither depended upon nor was enhanced by extinction of X. The results presented here appear to limit the generality of ATCP.
authors: University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), San Sebastián, Spain, JamesByron.Nelson@ehu.es.
authors: James Byron
authors: JB
authors: Nelson
authors: Jeffrey A
authors: JA
authors: Lamoureux
mesh_terms: D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D003463:Cues; D005108:Extinction, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D011897:Random Allocation