Three experiments with rats examined the effects of preexposure to an unconditioned stimulus (US; a single food pellet) on the subsequent ability of that US to effectively signal the delivery of three food pellets during a US-US conditioning procedure. In Experiment 1, latent inhibition (LI) rats showed attenuated conditioning, compared to control (C) rats, when a single food pellet, delivered 10 minutes into a session, was followed by three additional pellets. In preexposure, one pellet had been delivered 10 minutes into each session (in group LI), or placed into the magazine at the beginning of each session (in group C). Experiment 2 showed that this effect was evident when the conditions of preexposure matched those of conditioning for group C, and Experiment 3 showed that the difference between groups LI and C was not a product of context conditioning, or latent inhibition to the noise of the feeder in group LI. Implications of these results for theories of latent inhibition are considered.
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