Abstract
Three experiments demonstrated Pavlovian appetitive discrimination learning in the marine mollusc,Aplysia californica. In each experiment, subjects were exposed to two conditioned stimuli; one stimulus (CS+) was paired with food presentations and the other stimulus (CS−) was never followed by food. In Experiments 1 and 3 different chemosensory stimuli were used, and in Experiment 2 different tactile stimuli were used. For both types of conditioned stimuli, bite responses occurred significantly more often to the CS+ than to the CS−. Experiment 2 also showed thatAplysia could learn a reversal of this discrimination. Experiment 3 showed that nonreinforced presentations of CS+ resulted in a decline in the frequency of conditioned biting. The implications of these results for neurobiological analyses of learning are discussed.
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This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BNS-8922551 to R.M.C. and by funds from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. K.G. and A.M. were supported by research fellowships awarded by Brown University’s Early Identification Program. We thank Robin Absher and Emily Whitcomb for assistance with data collection. Experiment 1 was presented at the 65th Annual Meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association in Providence and at the Second Annual Summer Research Symposium at Brown University in August 1993. A brief description of Experiment 1 also appears in Colwill (1996).
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Colwill, R.M., Goodrum, K. & Martin, A. Pavlovian appetitive discriminative conditioning inAplysia californica . Animal Learning & Behavior 25, 268–276 (1997). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199084
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199084