Progressively increasing the difficulty of a Pavloviandiscrimination in a voluntary exposure to toxin paradigmwith rats attenuates the magnitude of the easy-to-hard effect

Rats received two stages of Pavlovian discrimination training with two flavor stimuli: acompound consisting of saccharin mixed with 0.15 M lithium chloride (LiCl), and the sac-charin alone. The concentration of the saccharin solution (i.e., the common element sharedby the stimuli to be discriminated...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Arriola Garicano, Naiara, Alonso Martínez, Gumersinda, Rodríguez San Juan, Gabriel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2015
País:España
Institución:Universidad del País Vasco
Repositorio:Addi. Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación
OAI Identifier:oai:addi.ehu.eus:10810/75540
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10810/75540
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:progressive training
easy-to-hard effect
discrimination
aversion
ingested lithium
rats
Descripción
Sumario:Rats received two stages of Pavlovian discrimination training with two flavor stimuli: acompound consisting of saccharin mixed with 0.15 M lithium chloride (LiCl), and the sac-charin alone. The concentration of the saccharin solution (i.e., the common element sharedby the stimuli to be discriminated) was relatively high in Stage 2 (1.2%). Groups differedin the pre-training that they received in Stage 1. Group Progressive (PROG) was pretrainedin easier versions of the discrimination of Stage 2. The difficulty of these discriminationswas gradually increased by progressively increasing the initial concentration of saccha-rin (0.15%). Group PROG learned the hardest discrimination faster than a control group(HARD) that was trained in this discrimination in both Stages 1 and 2 (Experiment 1). Wealso observed that the enhancement of learning observed in Group PROG was less thanthat observed after continuous pre-training with the easiest version of the discrimination(Group CONT; Experiment 2). We discuss the implications of these results in relation toother previous demonstrations of the easy-to-hard effect.