A role for stimulus generalization in conditional discrimination learning

In each of three experiments on discrimination learning by rats, whether or not a 10-sec target stimulus was followed by food was determined by the nature of a 2-min background stimulus that accompanied it. A conditional discrimination was employed in Experiment 1 such that background A indicated food would follow one target but not the other, whereas this relationship between the targets and food was reversed in the presence of background B. Experiment 2 employed two feature-positive discriminations. Subsequent test trials revealed that the background for one discrimination was able to enhance responding during the target for the other discrimination. Experiment 3 employed a feature-positive and a feature-negative discrimination prior to test trials in which each target was presented separately during a compound of both background stimuli. The compound enhanced responding to the target from the feature-positive discrimination and reduced it to the target from the feature-negative discrimination. We suggest that to accommodate all these findings, the best explanation is provided by a configural model of Pavlovian conditioning.