1988 Volume 6 Issue 2 Pages 95-100
The present experiment was conducted to ascertain the phenomenon of Pavlovian conditioned inhibition in rats in a licking conditioned suppression situation, and to examine the efficacy of the Rescorla-Wagner model in describing the conditioning processes. In the first phase, conditioned excitation was established to the stimulus A by the A-US pairings. Thereafter, the stimulus A was simultaneously presented with another neutral stimulus X without being paired with the US. In this phase, the groups received different treatments concerning the excitatory tendency of A: Group P received continued presentations of A-US pairings while the explicitly unpaired presentations of the A and US were given in Group U. Subsequent retardation test revealed that Group P had developed greater inhibitory tendency to X than Group U. The results were discussed in terms of the computer simulations of the Rescorla-Wagner model with special reference to the salience of the stimulus X.
