Extinction and renewal of Pavlovian modulation in human sequential Feature Positive discrimination learning

Abstract

Using a conditioned suppression task, we investigated extinction and renewal of Pavlovian modulation in human sequential Feature Positive (FP) discrimination learning. In Experiment 1, in context a participants were first trained on two FP discriminations, X→A+/A- and Y→B+/B-. Extinction treatment was administered in the acquisition context a (aaa group) or in a new context b (aba group), and comprised X→A- extinction and Y- control trials. Discriminative X→A/A responding was lost in both groups when tested in the extinction context, but partially recovered in the aba and not in the aaa group when tested in the acquisition context, suggesting extinction and renewal of extinguished modulation. The same was observed for the Y→B/B control pair, however, questioning whether the loss of discriminative X→A/A responding represented genuine extinction of modulation. In Experiment 2, including only aba groups, participants were trained in context a on two FP discriminations, X→A+/A- and Y→B+/B-, after which the group “Extinction” was exposed to X→A- extinction trials in context b, whereas the group “Control” was exposed to X- control trials; concurrently, both groups received further Y→B+/B- training. In the group Control, differential Y→B/B and X→A/A responding were acquired and maintained throughout the experiment. In the group Extinction, while Y→B/B responding was also maintained throughout, differential X→A/A responding disappeared because of X→A- extinction treatment when tested in the extinction context b, but partially reappeared when tested in the acquisition context a. This evidences aba-renewal of extinguished modulation.