Conditioned jaw movement in the rabbit.

Abstract

An investigation was conducted to demonstrate appetitive classical conditioning of jaw movements in the rabbit and to examine its course of acquisition and resistance to extinction. The distribution of response latencies and the percentage performance curve of a group given CS-US [conditional-stimulus, unconditional-stimulus] pairings, in comparison with 4 control groups, indicated that jaw movements elicited by a squirt of saccharine solution to the rabbit''s oral cavity were successfully conditioned to a previously neutral stimulus. The contribution of sensitized, pseudoconditioned, spontaneous, and reflex (alpha) responses to conditioned jaw movement was virtually nonexistent.