Abstract
Conditioned lick suppression in rats was used to explore the role of timing in trace conditioning. In Experiment 1, two groups of rats were exposed to pairings of a CS (CS1) with a US, under conditions in which the interstimulus interval (ISI) that separated CS1 offset and US onset was either 0 or 5 sec. Two additional groups were also exposed to the same CS1→US pairings with either a 0 or a 5-sec ISI, and then received “backward” second-order conditioning in which CS1 was immediately followed by a novel CS2 (i.e., CS1→CS2). A trace conditioning deficit was observed in that the CS1 conditioned with the 5-sec gap supported less excitatory responding than the CS1 conditioned with the 0-sec gap. However, CS2 elicited more conditioned responding in the group trained with the 5-sec CS1-US gap than in the group trained with the 0-sec CS1-US gap. Thus, the CS1-US interval had inverse effects on first- and second-order conditioned responding. Experiment 2 was conducted as a sensory preconditioning analogue to Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, rats received the CS1?CS2 pairings prior to the CS1→US pairings (in which CS1 was again conditioned with either a 0 or a 5-sec ISI). Experiment 2 showed a dissociation between first- and second-order conditioned responding similar to that observed in Experiment 1. These outcomes are not compatible with the view that differences in responding to CSs conditioned with different ISIs are mediated exclusively by differences in associative value. The results are discussed in the framework of the temporal coding hypothesis, according to which temporal relationships between events are encoded in elementary associations.
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Support for this research was provided by NIMH Grant 33881 and the SUNY-Binghamton Center for Cognitive and Psycholinguistic Sciences. R.C.B. was supported by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada postgraduate scholarship. We thank Eric Lampinstein, Wendy Packer, and Danielle Scarinci for their assistance in data collection. We also thank Francisco J. Esmoris-Arranz, Lisa M. Gunther, and Hua Yin for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge two anonymous reviewers for pointing out interpretive alternatives for Experiment 1 that led to the design of Experiment 2.
—Accepted by previous editor, Vincent M. LoLordo
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Cole, R.P., Barnet, R.C. & Miller, R.R. Temporal encoding in trace conditioning. Animal Learning & Behavior 23, 144–153 (1995). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199929
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199929