EXAMINATION OF THE ROLE OF INSTRUMENTAL CONSUMPTION AND EXPECTANCY LEARNING IN PREFERENCE CONDITIONING

DAVID HOMER CAMPBELL, Purdue University

Abstract

In Experiments 1a and b rats were given go/no go discrimination training with flavors as cues followed by sucrose and quinine as differential outcomes. Flavor cues were effective discriminative stimuli for go/no go locomotor behavior and subjects also acquired a conditioned preference for the sucrose-paired flavor. Go/no go discrimination was taken as a measure of differential expectancies associated with the two flavor cues. It is unlikely that discrimination behavior and the conditioned flavor preferences were both mediated by a single conditioning process because they involved incompatible responses. Effort was made to dissociate these multiple processes through pre-exposure to flavors and/or independent presentations of flavor cues with no consequences; the effect of these treatments differed depending on the context in which training and flavor exposures occurred. In Experiment 2 the subjects were given similar training in two separate contexts but the pairing relationship between flavor cues and consequences was explicitly reversed between the two training contexts. Acquisition of context specific expectancies was evidenced by significant go/no go discrimination tested in one of the conditioning contexts. There was little evidence to suggest the establishment of context specific conditioned preferences, however. There was indication that preference test results may have been influenced by instrumental behaviors that carried over from discrimination training. In Experiment 3 the flavor-consequence contingency was more strongly manipulated and the effects on preference conditioning were observed. When only 25% of all favor presentations were followed by consequence solutions preference conditioning was attenuated somewhat, but when only 25% of all consequence presentations were preceded by the associated flavor cues no disruption in preference conditioning occurred. No overall group differences were observed, however.

Degree

Ph.D.

Subject Area

Psychology|Experiments

COinS