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The effects of habituation training on compound conditioning are not reversed by an associative activation treatment.

Dwyer DM, Honey RC

School of PsychologyCardiff University, Cardiff, United Kingdom. DwyerDM@cardiff.ac.uk

Rats received habituation to either 2 compound flavors (AX and BY; the activation group) or a compound and an element alone (AX and Y; the habituation group). They also received additional presentations of Y alone either after (Experiment 1) or intermixed (Experiment 2) with habituation. In the habituation group, A had undergone habituation whereas B had not; in the activation group, both A and B had undergone habituation, but presenting Y alone should result in associative activation of B and that, according to G. Hall (2003), should increase B's efficacy. A supplementary experiment demonstrated that the presentation of Y does activate a representation of B. In both experiments, an aversion was established to AB, and subsequently the habituation group showed a greater aversion to B than to A. However, in neither experiment was there any indication that the activation group showed a greater aversion to B than to A. These results are inconsistent with the suggestion that the associative activation of a stimulus representation in the absence of the stimulus reverses the effects of habituation training.

Published 1 May 2007 in J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process, 33(2): 185-90.
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