Jove
Visualize
Contact Us
JoVE
x logofacebook logolinkedin logoyoutube logo
ABOUT JoVE
OverviewLeadershipBlogJoVE Help Center
AUTHORS
Publishing ProcessEditorial BoardScope & PoliciesPeer ReviewFAQSubmit
LIBRARIANS
TestimonialsSubscriptionsAccessResourcesLibrary Advisory BoardFAQ
RESEARCH
JoVE JournalMethods CollectionsJoVE Encyclopedia of ExperimentsArchive
EDUCATION
JoVE CoreJoVE BusinessJoVE Science EducationJoVE Lab ManualFaculty Resource CenterFaculty Site
Terms & Conditions of Use
Privacy Policy
Policies

Related Experiment Videos

Timed excitatory conditioning under zero and negative contingencies.

Douglas A Williams1, Carla Lawson, Rachel Cook

  • 1Psychology Department, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. d.williams@uwinnipeg.ca

Journal of Experimental Psychology. Animal Behavior Processes
|February 6, 2008
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Related Concept Videos

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by
Same author

Dietary habits and barriers to healthier eating in Asian American adults, considering ethnic subgroups and immigrant generations.

Appetite·2026
Same author

A new use of Agrobacterium plant growth regulator genes for plant bioengineering.

Frontiers in plant science·2026
Same author

Clinical characteristics and survival of hospitalized anthrax patients with pleural, pericardial, or peritoneal fluid collections.

Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America·2026
Same author

Evaluating Methadone as Treatment for Refractory Cancer-Induced Bone Pain.

Journal of pain & palliative care pharmacotherapy·2026
Same author

Characteristics and Outcomes of Patients With Hematologic Malignancies Hospitalized With Respiratory Viral Infections.

Open forum infectious diseases·2026
Same author

Safety of gemtuzumab ozogamicin with cytarabine, daunorubicin, and midostaurin induction in FLT3-mutated AML.

Blood neoplasia·2026
Same journal

The fate of redundant cues in human predictive learning.

Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes·2013
Same journal

The adaptive analysis of visual cognition using genetic algorithms.

Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes·2013
Same journal

Active change detection by pigeons and humans.

Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes·2013
Same journal

Renewal effects in interference between outcomes as measured by a cued response reaction time task: further evidence for associative retrieval models.

Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes·2013
Same journal

Pigeons use low rather than high spatial frequency information to make visual category discriminations.

Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes·2013
Same journal

Associative models of instrumental learning: a response to Dupuis and Dawson.

Journal of experimental psychology. Animal behavior processes·2013
See all related articles

Rats learned to anticipate food pellets even when the signal indicated no change or a decrease in food availability. Timing (when) of the signal became more important than the overall probability (whether) of food delivery for conditioning.

Area of Science:

  • Behavioral neuroscience
  • Animal learning and behavior

Background:

  • Classical conditioning research traditionally emphasizes the importance of contingency (whether a conditioned stimulus signals a change in unconditioned stimulus occurrence).
  • The role of temporal factors (when the unconditioned stimulus is expected) in conditioning is also recognized but often considered secondary to contingency.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether rats can form anticipatory responses to a conditioned stimulus (CS) even when it does not predict an increase in unconditioned stimulus (US) probability.
  • To challenge the traditional view that a positive CS-US contingency is essential for successful conditioning.

Main Methods:

  • Rats (Rattus norvegicus) were exposed to a conditioned stimulus (CS) paired with a food pellet unconditioned stimulus (US).
  • The US was delivered at a fixed time during the CS, while USs also occurred probabilistically during the intertrial interval at rates equal to or higher than the CS rate.

Related Experiment Videos

  • Experiments manipulated the rate of US occurrence during the intertrial interval relative to the CS.

    • Main Results:

    • Rats demonstrated anticipatory behavior towards the CS, even when the CS signaled no overall increase or even a decrease in the probability of receiving a US.
    • The temporal predictability of the US within the CS (when) appeared to be a stronger factor in driving anticipatory responses than the overall contingency (whether) between the CS and US.

    Conclusions:

    • The findings suggest that temporal factors ('when') in conditioning can be more critical than contingency ('whether') in establishing anticipatory responses.
    • This challenges the established principle that a positive conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus contingency is a prerequisite for successful conditioning.