Discriminative conditioning. I. A discriminative property of conditioned anticipation.

Abstract

In the expt. described, a series of presentations of a tone followed by food to a group of rats resulted in the conditioning of an anticipatory state to the tone, the primary index being the discriminative effect of the tone upon a lever-pressing response which had previously been reinforced with food but in no way associated with the tone. During a test period subsequent to the series of tone-food combinations, the rate of lever-pressing was markedly increased during intervals when the tone was sounding and depressed during silent intervals, although the response had never been associated with the tone prior to the test period.