Discrimination Reversal Facilitates Contextual Conditioning in Rats’ Appetitive conditioning

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted with the goal of exploring the effect of experiencing associative interference upon concurrent learning about conditioned stimuli and contexts in rats' appetitive conditioning. During the first training phase, two groups of rats received a conditioned stimulus (CS1) followed by food, whereas another conditioned stimulus (CS2) was presented alone. During a second training phase, discrimination was reversed in group R, while it remained the same in group D. A new conditioned stimulus (CS3) was concurrently trained followed by food during this second Phase (Experiment 1). Reversal discrimination did not facilitate concurrent conditioning of the new stimulus, but there was a trend towards facilitation of contextual conditioning, measured by magazine entries in the absence of stimuli, that was confirmed in Experiment 2. These results suggest that the interference treatment may facilitate context conditioning under circumstances and with boundaries that are yet to be established.Associations among different stimuli are not always stable in nature. The environment changes, and what it was certain at a given point may not *

Reversal training facilitates acquisition of new learning in a Morris water maze

“…In that sense, attention towards new stimuli may already be at an asymptote (Larrauri & Schmajuk, 2008), while attention to a familiar, irrelevant, context should be low and subject to increases with interference. Such an idea is consistent with the differential effects of the interference experience on new learning reported by Alcalá et al (2018). However, contrary to the experimental design used by Alcalá et al, (2018) in which animals only needed to learn to that the new cue was related to the administration of food, in the current experiments attention to the new cue was not enough to solve the spatial problem.…”

“…As discussed earlier, Alcalá et al (2018) found no facilitation with a simple novel CS in Pavlovian conditioning following reversal training. We assumed that lack of effect to be due to a limit to which the reversal can increase attention to novel stimuli that already command substantial attention (Larrauri & Schmajuk, 2008).…”

“…However, facilitation of learning after the interference experience may not be a ubiquitous effect. As noted above, Alcalá et al (2018) failed to find facilitation of learning about a new CS during the interference experience, while finding facilitation of context conditioning. This null result suggests that there could be limitations to the effects of experiencing interference on subsequent learning.…”

“…However, the effect of the interference experience upon new learning is not necessarily ubiquitous. For instance, Alcalá, González, Aristizabal, Callejas-Aguilera, and Rosas (2018) found that the experience of a discrimination reversal facilitated context conditioning, but it did not facilitate learning about a CS-US new relationship learned concurrently with the reversal experience. These conflicting results prompt the need for further research that will help to understand the generality and the limitations of facilitation of learning by interference experiences.…”

“…Thus, it was expected that the experience of interference would have similar effects in aversively motivated spatial learning to those reported in rats' Pavlovian (e.g. Alcalá et al, 2019) and operant appetitive (Liberman, 1951;Shanab & Cotton, 1970) conditioning and in human learning (Easdale et al, 2019;González et al, 2019;Nelson et al, 2018), rather than the null effect of interference upon concurrent acquisition of simple conditioning reported by Alcalá et al (2018). Two experiments were conducted in a Morris water maze in which different landmarks signaled the position of a hidden platform.…”