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Taste/tactile cue discriminations in taste‐aversion learning foIIowing depletion of noradrenaIine
Author(s) -
ARCHER TREVOR,
CALLENHOLM NILS E. B.,
JÄRBE TORBJÖRN U. C.,
MINOR BRUCE G.,
MOHAMMED ABDUL K.
Publication year - 1986
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1986.tb01185.x
Subject(s) - saccharin , psychology , reinforcement , conditioning , taste aversion , context (archaeology) , saline , lithium chloride , taste , associative learning , chemistry , neuroscience , cognitive psychology , anesthesia , social psychology , medicine , paleontology , statistics , mathematics , organic chemistry , biology
Four experiments were performed to investigate the effect of noradrenaline (NA) depletion, following systemic DSP4 treatment, upon a tastehactile discrimination in taste‐aversion learning. In Experiments 1 and 2 , noisy bottle (A) + lithium chloride pairings were alternated with saccharin (B) + saline pairings, and vice versa, during Phase I conditioning. The particular order of reinforcement presentation in each case was then reversed, so that a noisy bottle (A) + saline pairing was now altered with a saccharin (B) + lithium chloride pairing, etc., during Phase II (reversal) conditioning. In Experiments 3 and 4 , saccharin in noisy bottle (AB) + lithium chloride pairings alternated with either noisy bottle (A) + saline or saccharin (B) + saline pairings, and vice versa, during Phase I conditioning; the order of reinforcement presentation was then reversed, as above. None of the four experiments performed offered any evidence of impairments of the discrimination task as a result of NA depletion. These results are discussed in the context of associative preparedness and of discrimination learning in operant tasks and recent findings on compound conditioning, following the loss of NA.