Latent inhibition (LI) is observed as the retarded formation of excitatory or inhibitory conditioned responding (CR) to a Pavlovian conditioned stimulus (CS) following repeated nonreinforced exposure to that CS. Some theories of LI have suggested that LI occurs due to the formation of an association between the preexposure context and the CS. To date, no empirical evaluation of the context-CS association has been conducted in a LI experiment. The proposed research will use conditioned suppression of licking in water-deprived rats to concurrently measure LI and the strength of the context-CS association. The latter will be accomplished using a variant of Marlin's (1982) technique of """"""""contextual revaluing"""""""" following CS preexposure. Within this preparation, contextual extinction following CS exposure, massed vs. distributed CS preexposure and the addition of a novel stimulus following each preexposure CS will each be investigated for their effects upon LI and the context-CS association. In so doing, the proposed research will determine whether in fact there is a covariance between the degree of LI and the strength of the context-CS association. These studies will form the basis for further investigation of paradigms where the formation of context-CS associations has potentially large effects on associative behavior, e.g., sensory preconditioning, higher-order conditioning, and extinction. The project has potential relevance for therapeutic treatments that rely on Pavlovian conditioning for behavior modification (e.g., desensitization and counter conditioning). The proposed research could aid in specifying the extent such procedures would be differentially effective owing to the modulation of attention to the CS in use by the context-CS association.
