Inhibitory Conditioning Resulting from a Reduction in the Magnitude of Reinforcement

Abstract

Five experiments, all employing conditioned suppression in rats, studied inhibitory conditioning to a stimulus signalling a reduction in shock intensity. Experimental subjects were conditioned to a tone signalling a 1·0 mA shock and to a tone-light compound signalling a 0·4 mA shock. On a summation test in which it alleviated the suppression maintained by a third stimulus also associated with the 1·0 mA shock, the light was established as a conditioned inhibitor. Retardation tests gave ambiguous results: the light was relatively slow to condition when paired, either alone or in conjunction with another stimulus, with the 0·4 mA shock, but the difference from a novel stimulus control group was not significant. Two final experiments found no evidence at all of inhibition on a summation test in which the light was presented in conjunction with a stimulus that had itself been associated with the 0·4 mA shock. The results of these experiments have implications for the question of what animals learn during the course of inhibitory conditioning.