According to behavioral momentum theory, preference and relative resistance to change in concurrent chains schedules are correlated and reflect the relative conditioned value of discriminative stimuli. In the present study, we explore the generality of this relation by manipulating the temporal context within a concurrent-chains procedure through…

We conducted three experiments to reproduce and extend Perone and Courtney's (1992) study of pausing at the beginning of fixed-ratio schedules. In a multiple schedule with unequal amounts of food across two components, they found that pigeons paused longest in the component associated with the smaller amount of food (the lean component), but only…

One conditioned taste aversion experiment with rats assessed the impact of extinguishing a target conditioned stimulus (CS), S, in compound with a second CS, A, upon conditioned responding elicited by CS S when presented alone at test. Following initial conditioning treatment with CSs A and S, the experiment manipulated number of extinction trials…

There has been considerable interest lately in cases where instrumental conditionability appears to depend on the reinforcer used. Here the effects of Pavlovian conditioned stimuli (CSs)on golden hamster behaviors was observed. The intent was to see whether previously reported differences among the behaviors produced by food reinforcement and…

Three experiments, employing conditioned suppression in rats, examined the extent to which pretraining on one element of a compound stimulus blocked conditioning to the other element when some feature of the reinforcer was changed on compound trials. (Editor)

These experiments attempt to optimize the possibility of demonstrating blocking in a taste-aversion paradigm and to elucidate the conditions under which this interference occurs. (Author/RK)

Investigates the nature of the rhythmic process mediating multiple retention deficits in rats, i.e., whether it was induced by a training procedure or based on a pre-existing physiological rhythm. Also concerns the mechanism of the rhythm's effect on retention performance, whether it affects performance factors per se or the retrieval of prior…