Interactions between retroactive-interference and context-mediated treatments that impair Pavlovian conditioned responding

Abstract

In Pavlovian fear conditioning, context-mediated decrements in conditioned responding (e.g., the US preexposure effect) can counteract competition between cues trained together (eg., overshadowing). Two experiments were conducted using rats in a conditioned lick suppression reparation to determine whether context-mediated competition also counteracts competition between cues trained separately (retroactive interferencer or RI). In Experiment 1, a combination of degraded contingency and RI treatments produced less of a decremert in conditioned responding than did either of those treatments alone. Experiment 2 showed that RI treatment attenuates the normally deleterious effect of trial massing. The results suggest that empirical similarities are shared by interference between cues trained apart and competition between cues trained together. Copyright 2007 Psychonomic Society, Inc.