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Updated: May 13, 2026

A Procedure to Observe Context-induced Renewal of Pavlovian-conditioned Alcohol-seeking Behavior in Rats
Published on: September 19, 2014
An extension of the Rescorla and Wagner Simulator for context conditioning
Esther Mondragón1, Eduardo Alonso, Alberto Fernández
1Centre for Computational and Animal Learning Research, St Albans AL1 1RQ, UK. e.mondragon@cal-r.org
Abstract:
This paper introduces R&W Simulator version 4, which extends previous work by incorporating context simulation within standard Pavlovian designs. This addition allows the assessment of: (1) context-stimulus competition, by treating contextual cues as ordinary background stimuli present throughout the whole experimental session; (2) summation, by computing compound stimuli with contextual cues as an integrating feature, with and without the addition of specific configural cues; and (3) contingency effects in causal learning. These new functionalities broaden the range of experimental designs that the simulator is able to replicate, such as some recovery from extinction phenomena (e.g., renewal effects). In addition, the new version permits specifying probe trials among standard trials and extracting their values.
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