Abstract
2 groups of Ss received 16 conditioning or pseudoconditioning trials per day for 5 days. The compound (light-tone) CS was paired with a 3.5-ma electric shock (ISI = .5 sec.) in the conditioning group but the stimuli were not paired in the pseudoconditioning group. On Day 6 both groups received 2 counterbalanced CS-element test trials and then 18 CS-compound extinction trials. During acquisition, the conditioning group produced significantly larger GSRs over-all than the pseudoconditioning group, and the former's responses generally increased over test trials on each day while the latter's responses declined. There was an over-all decrease in GSR magnitude overnight in the conditioning group and an over-all rise in the pseudoconditioning group. The GSR was significantly smaller in Group E on the first element test trial than it was on the first compound trial on Day 5, but it was not significantly different from the final compound trial on Day 5, or from the mean of the first two compound trials on Day 6. There was a sustained, statistically significant difference in mean magnitude between the two groups across the extinction trials with very little evidence of any extinction effects.
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