Alleviating forgetting of active shock-avoidance by apparently unrelated food presentations

A series of four experiments investigated why forgetting of an active shock-avoidance response was reduced when an apparently unrelated appetitive experience occurred both prior to avoidance training and during the retention interval between training and testing. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated the reliability of the phenomenon and found that a sufficient condition for the effect was the presentation of food from a pellet dispenser (not an operant response per se). Experiment 3 demonstrated that the effect was not the result of enhanced activity. Experiment 4 showed that forgetting was still reduced when the appetitive experience occurred only prior to active avoidance or only during the retention interval. The results are discussed in regard to the reinstatement of the reinforcer representation.