Contextual conditioning during free-operant extinction: Unsignaled, signaled, and backward-signaled noncontingent food

Abstract

Three experiments were designed to study the effects of contextual conditioning on the extinction of instrumental leverpressing that had been reinforced on a random-interval schedule. In Experiment 1, noncontingent food retarded extinction, but signaling food delivery, a treatment that should reduce contextual conditioning, reduced the interference. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 and demonstrated that if the food preceded rather than followed the signal, the retardation of extinction was not reduced but was enhanced. In Experiment 3, non-contingent leverpressing was used to directly verify that the three treatments-forward signaling, noncontingent food, and backward signaling-differentially influenced contextual conditioning. Forward signaling produced the least, and backward signaling produced the most, contextual conditioning. This monotonic relationship between contextual conditioning and interference with extinction was used as evidence to support the argument that context-food associations are important in controlling instrumental responding. © 1990 Psychonomic Society, Inc.