Isolated effects of number of acquisition trials on extinction of rat conditioned approach behavior

• Published in: Behavioural processes Vol. 90; no. 1; pp. 34 - 48
• Main Authors: Gottlieb, Daniel A., Prince, Emily B.
• Format: Journal Article Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.05.2012; Elsevier
• Subjects: Amount of training; Animal ethology; Animals; Approach behavior; Asymmetry; Biological and medical sciences; conditioned behavior; Conditioning; Conditioning, Classical; Conditioning, Operant; Extinction; Extinction, Psychological; Frustration; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; General aspects; Information processing; learning; Male; Number of trials; Overtraining; Overtraining extinction effect (OEE); Partial reinforcement; Partial reinforcement extinction effect (PRE); Psychological Theory; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Rats; Rats, Sprague-Dawley; Reinforcement (Psychology); Reinforcement Schedule; Spontaneous recovery; training (animals); Overtraining extinction effect (OEE); Partial reinforcement extinction effect (PRE); Conditioning; Amount of training; Extinction; Number of trials; PRE; Rat; Partial reinforcement extinction effect; Rodentia; Vertebrata; Mammalia; Animal; Reinforcement; Approach behavior
• DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2012.03.010
• ISSN: 0376-6357; 1872-8308

► We look at effects of number of acquisition trials per session on extinction. ► We identity qualitative between- and within-subject differences. ► Between-subject, more trials sometimes lead to faster extinction. ► Within-subject, increasing trials lead to slower extinction. ► We report a rare appetitive Pavlovian overtraining extinction effect. Four conditioned approach experiments with rats assessed for effects of number of acquisition trials on extinction of conditioned responding, when number of acquisition sessions and total acquisition time were held constant. In Experiment 1, 32 trials per acquisition session led to more extinction responding than did 1 or 2 trials per session but less than did 4 trials per session. In Experiment 2, 2 trials per acquisition session led to more spontaneous recovery than did 32 trials per session. These latter findings are reminiscent of the overtraining extinction effect (OEE). Experiment 3 attempted to reduce the OEE with a preconditioning phase of partial reinforcement. Experiment 4 attempted to reduce the beneficial within-subject effects of increasing the number of acquisition trials on extinction observed by Gottlieb and Rescorla (2010) by extinguishing stimuli in different sessions. Overall, results suggest a procedural asymmetry: between-subject, increasing the number of trials between any pair of trials does not lead to greater persistence of responding during extinction; within-subject, it does. Results are discussed from an associative perspective, with a focus on explanations involving either frustration or comparator mechanisms, and from an information processing perspective, with a focus on Rate Estimation Theory.