Context and Behavioral Processes in Extinction

  1. Mark E. Bouton
  1. Department of Psychology, University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont 05405, USA

Abstract

This article provides a selective review and integration of the behavioral literature on Pavlovian extinction. The first part reviews evidence that extinction does not destroy the original learning, but instead generates new learning that is especially context-dependent. The second part examines insights provided by research on several related behavioral phenomena (the interference paradigms, conditioned inhibition, and inhibition despite reinforcement). The final part examines four potential causes of extinction: the discrimination of a new reinforcement rate, generalization decrement, response inhibition, and violation of a reinforcer expectation. The data are consistent with behavioral models that emphasize the role of generalization decrement and expectation violation, but would be more so if those models were expanded to better accommodate the finding that extinction involves a context-modulated form of inhibitory learning.

Footnotes

  • 1 The main exception to the second-association rule is latent inhibition, in which the first phase can be shown to exert a context-dependent influence on the second phase (see Hall and Channell 1985) despite the fact that it is arguably the first thing learned. Latent inhibition is unique, however, in that the CS is not paired with anything significant in the first phase. One possibility, therefore, is that it is in part encoded as a feature of the context, making it difficult to extract it from that context when it is paired with the US in phase 2 (cf. Gluck and Myers 1993).

  • Article and publication are at http://www.learnmem.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/lm.78804.

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