Recent reports in the literature show that an extinction treatment makes subsequently learned information context-specific. An experiment in conditioned taste aversion evaluated whether pre-exposure and conditioning with a given flavor would make conditioning of a different flavor context specific as well. Rats received conditioning with taste Y in context A, before being tested in extinction either in context A or in a different but equally familiar context (context B). Half of the animals received a pre-exposure and conditioning treatment with a different flavor (X), while the other half only received conditioning. The context change at testing led to higher consumption of Y in the animals that had received previous pre-exposure and conditioning with X. The implications of these results for the mechanisms underlying context-switch effects are discussed.
Keywords: Context dependence; Pre-exposure; Rats; Taste aversion.
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