Postconditioning manipulation of context associative strength on conditioned responding in conditioned taste aversion

Abstract

These experiments examined the effect of manipulating context associative strength on conditioned responding to a conditioned stimulus using a conditioned taste aversion procedure. In Experiments 1and 3, subjects were given one or two flavor-LiCl pairings in a distinct context followed by context-US pairings. Rats that received context-US pairings were predicted to show a lower CR to the flavor at test than rats that received either context-US pairings in an irrelevant context or rats that received no context-US pairings. No difference was observed between these treatments. Experiments 2 and 4 examined effects of postconditioning context-alone exposures. Subjects received context-US conditioning trials as well as one or two CS-US pairings during initial training, followed by context-alone exposures. It was predicted that context exposures would increase the CR at test. Rats in these experiments also showed no differences in CR, indicating that postcondtioning context-alone exposures did not affect the CR to the CSs.