Nonrewarded Goal-Box Placements and Resistance to Extinction: Specificity of Conditioned Stimuli

Abstract

In two experiments, rats received repetitive sequences of nonrewarded goal-box placements and rewarded running trials. In Exp. I, a traditional extinction procedure was employed with subjects receiving daily series of nonrewarded running trials to the goal-box. In Exp. II, a nonrewarded goal-box placement preceded each nonrewarded run in extinction for half of the subjects. Enhanced extinction responding was observed only in this latter case. The data indicate that associative strength accrued to stimuli associated with nonrewarded goal-box placements are highly specific and generalize very little to stimuli associated with nonrewarded running trials.