Following discriminative straight-alley training, rats were extinguished to S+ only or to an alternating S+ and S– trial sequence. Extinction was conducted after one-half of the subjects had been injected with sodium amytal while one-half were injected with saline. The saline subjects displayed a robust positive induction effect, i.e., subjects extinguished more slowly to S+ if S– trials were interspersed than if only S+ trials were given. This effect was not observed in the sodium amytal subjects. The results support an interpretation of positive induction in extinction based on the frustrative effects of nonreward.
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