Association of conditioned stimuli during serial conditioning by pigeons

Wasserman, Edward A.; Carr, Donald L.; Deich, James D.

doi:10.3758/bf03212002

Cited by 19 publications

(45 citation statements)

References 12 publications

(12 reference statements)

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“…Second, in the serial case, the two elements of the compound are not coextensive. Such an arrangement would be expected to reduce any perceptual configuring of the elements (Wasserman, Carr, & Deich, 1978), which might mitigate against a recovery of the response to the overshadowed stimulus invoked by extinction of the overshadowing stimulus.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covariation in conditioned response strength between stimuli trained in compound

Matzel

Shuster

Miller

1987

Animal Learning & Behavior

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Conditioned lick suppression by water-deprived rats was used to elaborate on recent evidence that the attenuated conditioned response elicited by an overshadowed stimulus may be enhanced by extinction ofthe overshadowing stimulus with which it had been trained in simultaneous compound. Using a modified serial stimulus arrangement in which a light coexisted with the last half of a tone that terminated with footshock, it was found in Experiment 1 that the tone overshadowed the light. Extinction of the tone-shock association resulted in a virtually complete recovery of the response to the overshadowed light. Using this serial overshadowing procedure, the possibility that the strength of a conditioned response to an element trained in compound covaries as a function of the strength of the response to the other element was tested in Experiment 2. Following overshadowing training similar to that of Experiment 1, independent reinforcement of the overshadowed light, that is, associative inflation, was found to have no deleterious effect on the response to the overshadowing tone. This suggests that the effects of postconditioning extinction and inflation of one element do not have symmetrical effects upon responding to the other element. The results of Experiment 2 were replicated in Experiment 3 using a simultaneous compound stimulus as opposed to the serial compound of the previous studies. These results are discussed in terms of various associative and cognitive models of learning and performance.Recent reports by Kaufman and Bolles (1981) and Matzel, Schachtman, and Miller (1985) have indicated that the attenuated response evoked by a weak stimulus (X) following reinforcement in compound with a more salient stimulus (A) can be enhanced by postconditioning extinction (i.e., nonreinforced exposure) of A. These results challenge the traditional view that "overshadowing" deficits represent an acquisition failure with respect to the less salient cue (Kamin, 1969a;Mackintosh, 1975;Pavlov, 1927;Rescorla & Wagner, 1972). Kamin, for instance, suggested that when the more salient A stimulus is reinforced in compound with X, A acquires associative strength at a more rapid rate, quickly becoming a reliable predictor of the unconditioned stimulus (US). As the US is no longer "surprising," the less salient X cue, which is still at a subasymptotic associative level, acquires no additional associative strength. Similarly, Rescorla and Wagner (1972) proposed that the associative strength that a given US presentation can support is limited, and the more salient cue in a reinforced compound accrues the available strength at the expense of the less salient cue. These views of overshadowing assume that increments in associative strength are determined by the subject's expectation of the particular US paired with the compound stimulus. In contrast, both Mackintosh (1975) and Pearce Support for this research was provided by NSF Grant 86-00755. We are grateful to Ronald Sigmundi for his helpful comments on an early draft of this report. Add...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covariation in conditioned response strength between stimuli trained in compound

Matzel

Shuster

Miller

1987

Animal Learning & Behavior

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“…The antecedent stimuli in a sequence of stimuli preceding responseindependent food presentation have been shown to control directed key pecks (Newlin & LoLordo, 1976;Ricci, 1973;Wasserman, Carr, & Deich, 1978 (MAY) interval that averaged 240 seconds. In one group, four 7.5-s stimuli preceded food presentation, whereas a second group received four 30-s stimuli preceding food.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sign‐tracking With an Interfood Clock

Palya

1985

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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Food was presented to pigeons, irrespective of their behavior. The fixed 60-s interfood interval was segmented into ten 6-s periods, each signaled by a distinctive stimulus color, ordered by wavelength. This "interfood clock" reliably generated and maintained successively higher rates of key pecking at stimuli successively closer to food. Under extinction, key pecking ceased. When the standard stimulus sequence was changed to a different sequence for each bird, accelerated responding again emerged and was sustained under each of the new color sequences. However, responding was neither maintained nor acquired when each successive interfood interval provided a different random sequence of the ten stimuli. Thus, the interfood clock generated and maintained sign-tracking under stimulus control, and the resulting behavior was attributable neither to stimulus generalization nor to a simple temporal gradient.

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“…Short CS durations relative to an extended ITI (small CS/ITI ratio) have been demonstrated to enhance conditioning (Gibbon et al, 1977;Terrace et al, 1975;Tomie et al, 1989). In the case of Wasserman et al (1978), the CS2 was an excellent temporal predictor of the CS1-on every trial there were exactly 10 s (1/6 th of the ITI) of separation between CS2 onset and CS1 onset. However, because the CTRL was presented at the same time as the CS2, the CTRL was also temporally correlated with the CS1 and with the US, so temporal correlation between stimuli, by itself, cannot explain the differential responsiveness to the CS2 over CTRL.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Prior studies using serial conditioning (Wasserman et al, 1978) and second-order conditioning (Rescorla and Cunningham, 1979) of autoshaped keypecking have demonstrated that pigeons respond to a second-order stimulus (CS2) that signals the location of an upcoming firstorder stimulus (CS1) that is paired with food (US). The design based on two stimuli, CS2 and CS1, is primarily a pragmatic solution to the limitations of the standard operant chamber, which typically holds a single food dispenser.…”

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Spatial Pavlovian Conditioning

Mazur¹

2011

PsycEXTRA Dataset

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i ABSTRACT Three experiments used a spatial serial conditioning paradigm to assess the effectiveness of spatially informative conditioned stimuli in eliciting tracking behavior in pigeons. The experimental paradigm consisted of the simultaneous presentation of 2 key lights (CS2 and CTRL), followed by another key light (CS1), followed by food (the unconditioned stimulus or US). CS2 and CTRL were presented in 2 of 3 possible locations, randomly assigned; CS1 was always presented in the same location as CS2. CS2 was designed to signal the spatial, but not the temporal locus of CS1; CS1 signaled the temporal locus of the US. In Experiment 1, differential pecking on CS2 was observed even when CS2 was present throughout the interval between CS1s, but only in a minority of pigeons. A control condition verified that pecking on CS2 was not due to temporal proximity between CS2 and US. Experiment 2 demonstrated the reversibility of spatial conditioning between CS2 and CTRL. Asymptotic performance never involved tracking CTRL more than CS2 for any of 16 pigeons. It is inferred that pigeons learned the spatial association between CS2 and CS1, and that temporal contingency facilitated its expression as tracking behavior. In a third experiment, with pigeons responding to a touchscreen monitor, differential responding to CS2 was observed only when CS2 disambiguated the location of a random CS1. When the presentation location of CS1 was held constant, no differences in responding to CS2 or CTRL were observed.ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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Association of conditioned stimuli during serial conditioning by pigeons

Cited by 19 publications

References 12 publications

Covariation in conditioned response strength between stimuli trained in compound

Covariation in conditioned response strength between stimuli trained in compound

Sign‐tracking With an Interfood Clock

Spatial Pavlovian Conditioning

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