Acquired relational equivalence between contexts and features.
R. C. Honey, Andrew A. Watt · Journal of Experimental Psychology Animal Behavior Processes · 1999
In 2.experiments, rats received a biconditional discrimination wherein separate presentations of A and B signaled 1 pair of associations (X —> food and Y —> no food) and presentations of C and D signaled a different pair of associations (X —> no food and Y —> food). In Experiment 1, A, B, C, and D were diffuse contextual stimuli in which the associations were embedded. In Experiment 2, A and C were contextual stimuli whereas B and D were features that immediately preceded the associations. To assess the associative structures acquired during training, all rats then received a revaluation procedure in which A was paired with shock and C was not. In both experiments, greater generalized suppression of behavior was observed in the presence of B than in the presence of D. These results indicate that contextual stimuli share with features the capacity to evoke the associations that they have signaled. In a feature-positive discrimination, a feature (e.g., a light) precedes trials on which a target stimulus (e.g., a tone) is paired with a reinforcer (e.g., food) and in the absence of the feature, target presentations are nonreinforced. Animals readily acquire such discriminations. That is, they come to