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Serial order of conditional stimuli as a discriminative cue for Pavlovian conditioning

Murphy, R. A., Mondragon, E. ORCID: 0000-0003-4180-1261, Murphy, V. A. & Fouquet, N. (2004). Serial order of conditional stimuli as a discriminative cue for Pavlovian conditioning. Behavioural Processes, 67(2), pp. 303-311. doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2004.05.003

Abstract

The serial order in which events occur can be a signal for different outcomes and therefore might be a determinant of how an animal should respond. In this report, we propose a novel design for studying serial order learning in Pavlovian conditioning. In both Experiments 1a and 1b, hungry rats were trained with successively presented pairs of auditory and visual stimuli (e.g., A --> B) using four different stimuli (A-D). Four orders were paired with food (A --> B, B --> C, C --> D, D --> A) while the reversals were extinguished (B --> A, C --> B, D --> C, A --> D). An analysis of responding from the second element of each pair showed that the rats discriminated trial types that preceded food from those that did not. A replication of the effect using a completely counterbalanced design is described in Experiment 1b. These results suggest that rats can use the serial or temporal order of two sequentially presented non-overlapping elements as the basis for discrimination. Two associative accounts are suggested as possible mechanisms for solving the discrimination.

Publication Type: Article
Additional Information: © 2019 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publisher Keywords: Pavlovian conditioning, Serial order, Discrimination, Sequences
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
S Agriculture > SF Animal culture
Departments: School of Science & Technology > Computer Science
SWORD Depositor:
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