Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 9, 2026

Fear Incubation Using an Extended Fear-Conditioning Protocol for Rats
Published on: August 22, 2020
A short intertrial interval facilitates acquisition of context-conditioned fear and a short retention interval
Gavan P McNally1, R Frederick Westbrook
1School of Psychology, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. g.mcnally@unsw.edu.au
Abstract:
Rats were shocked in a context on two occasions and then tested for fear reactions as indexed by freezing. Rats spent the interval between conditioning trials and between conditioning and test in their home cages. A short interval between context-conditioning trials or between trials involving a discrete conditioned stimulus (CS) produced better learning than longer intervals. A short retention interval between conditioning and test produced better performance than longer intervals. The effects of the intertrial interval on learning are the opposite of those reported previously and are opposite to those predicted by contemporary learning theories. The effects of the training to test interval on performance are predicted by Wagner's sometimes opponent process (SOP) theory (Wagner, 1981).
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