Analysis of treatments to alleviate forgetting in rats

Two experiments with rats investigated the effectiveness of prior-cuing treatments for alleviating forgetting of aversive conditioning. The aim was to see which retrieval cues would be most effective within different contexts. Experiment 1 examined the contexts of classical fear conditioning and instrumental avoidance training. The results indicated that the response components were sufficient to reinstate avoidance training, whereas the unconditioned stimulus (US) was most effective for classical fear conditioning. In Experiment 1, the reinforcer per se was ineffective in reinstating instrumental avoidance training. Experiment 2 manipulated the training context and found that the US could be made an effective prior-cuing treatment for instrumental training if classical conditioning components were more prevalent during training. These results are interpreted to mean that a "critical context" must be reinstated by the cuing treatment if this treatment is to promote retrieval of the memory.