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Updated: Aug 24, 2026

Trace Fear Conditioning in Mice
Published on: March 20, 2014
Conditions favoring superconditioning of irrelevant conditioned stimuli
Douglas A Williams1, Rick Mehta, Jamie-Lynne Dumont
1Department of Psychology, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3B 2E9, Canada. williams@uwinnipcg.ca
Abstract:
Three appetitive conditioning experiments with rats found partial learning of complex XA+, XB+, XAB- (+ stands for reinforced; - stands for unreinforced) negative patterning discriminations with intermixed A+ and B+ trials (Experiment 1). AB+ trials (Experiment 2), and A+, B+, and AB+ trials (Experiment 3). In all experiments, differential responding emerged more slowly during the learning of the negative patterning discriminations than during learning of the XA+, XB+, XC- control discriminations. Additionally, the negative patterning groups responded more to X than to a separately reinforced Y on unreinforced test trials: thus, X derived superexcitatory properties. This pattern was reversed in the control groups. Results are consistent with theories that allow for different activation patterns when elements are combined.
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