Renewal of a conditioned taste aversion upon return to the conditioning context after extinction in another one

Abstract

Two experiments were conducted to test whether a renewal effect known to occur after extinction in many conditioning preparations can also be found in the conditioned taste aversion paradigm. Experiment 1 found that a taste aversion extinguished in a context different from the conditioning context was partially renewed when the taste was returned to the conditioning context. Extinction of the aversion proceeded similarly regardless of whether it occurred in the conditioning context or in a second context, suggesting that context-illness or context-taste associations that might have developed during conditioning did not influence performance, and that the flavor was perceived as the same stimulus in the two contexts. Experiment 2 examined the effects of the same context manipulations on flavors that had been explicitly unpaired with illness; no effects on flavor consumption were found. Taken together, the results suggest that the context might play the same modulatory role in taste aversion learning that it does in other conditioning procedures. © 1997 Academic Press.