Stimulus competition between a discrete cue and a training context: Cue competition does not result from the division of a limited resource.

Full Abstract

Several associative learning theories explain cue competition as resulting from the division of a limited resource among competing cues. This leads to an assumption that behavioral control by 2 cues competing with each other should always reflect a tradeoff, resulting in apparent conservation of total reinforcer value across all competing cues. This assumption was tested in 3 conditioned lick suppression experiments with rats, investigating the effects of changing the conditioned stimulus (CS) duration (Experiment 1), administering pretraining exposures to the CS (Experiment 2), and presenting nonreinforced CSs during the intertrial interval (Experiment 3) on Pavlovian conditioned responding to both the CS and the conditioning context. Fear conditioned to the context and to the CS decreased when the CS was of longer duration, massively preexposed before being paired with the reinforcer, or presented alone during the intertrial interval. These observations are problematic for the theories that explain cue competition as the division of a limited resource and suggest that the total reinforcer value across competing cues is not always fixed for a given reinforcer. Copyright (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved.

Author information

Author/s: Urushihara, Kouji (K); Miller, Ralph R (RR);

Affiliation: Department of Psychological Science, Health Sciences University of Hokkaido, Sapporo, Japan.

Grants: 33881 (Agency:PHS HHS)

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, N.I.H., Extramural; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes (J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2009-Apr; vol 35 (issue 2) : pp 197-211

Dates: Created 2009/04/14; Completed 2009/06/25;

PMID: 19364229, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 6/25/2009, IMS Date: )

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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