Negative patterning is easier than a biconditional discrimination

Two groups of rats were trained for 50 days on different discriminations in a magazine approach paradigm. One group was trained with a negative patterning schedule and a positive patterning schedule concurrently: they received intermixed trials of A+, B+, AB-, C-, D-, CD+ (A, B, C, and D are four di...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes Vol. 34; no. 4; p. 494
Main Authors Harris, Justin A, Livesey, Evan J, Gharaei, Saba, Westbrook, R Frederick
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.10.2008
Subjects
Affect
Animals
Association Learning
Conditioning (Psychology)
Discrimination Learning
Male
Rats
Rats, Wistar
Reinforcement Schedule
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Summary:Two groups of rats were trained for 50 days on different discriminations in a magazine approach paradigm. One group was trained with a negative patterning schedule and a positive patterning schedule concurrently: they received intermixed trials of A+, B+, AB-, C-, D-, CD+ (A, B, C, and D are four distinct stimuli; the plus sign denotes reinforcement with food, and the minus sign denotes nonreinforcement). The second group of rats was trained with the same four stimuli arranged as compounds and reinforced according to the biconditional schedule AB+, CD+, AC-, and BD-. The first group learned the positive patterning schedule much more quickly than the negative patterning schedule, but they learned the negative patterning schedule more effectively than the second group learned the biconditional schedule. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for models of stimulus representation.
ISSN:0097-7403
DOI:10.1037/0097-7403.34.4.494