Effect of Stress on Spontaneous Recovery of a Pavlovian Conditioned Response
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Authors
Siegl, Erica M.
Issue Date
1998
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Exposure to uncontrollable shock creates emotional, behavioral, and cognitive
deficits in animals. One cognitive repercussion is learned helplessness--the
subsequent inability to form simple R-S associations. Originally demonstrated
with operant conditioning, studies using Pavlovian conditioning returned various
and conflicting results. In a degraded contingency stress appears to facilitate
learning, while interfering with discrimination tasks in a feature negative
paradigm. To account for these results, Bouton proposed a context specific model
of inhibition, emphasizing the dependence of response of context. Using this
theory, we hypothesized that stress interferes with the formation of inhibitory
associations. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether rats exposed to
uncontrollable shock prior to extinction procedures will show evidence of
attenuated inhibitory conditioning, as measured by strength of CR during the
spontaneous recovery test, in comparison to rats not exposed to uncontrollable
shock. Contrary to expectations, there was no evidence of spontaneous recovery
in either the stressed or control group of rats. Over-training of extinction or the
unstable nature of appetitive conditioned responses may explain this result.
Future studies should consider minimizing extinction training.
Description
vi, 17 p.
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License
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