Timed excitatory conditioning under zero and negative contingencies

Rats (rattus norvegicus) anticipated the arrival of a food pellet unconditioned stimulus (US) even when the conditioned stimulus (CS) signaled no overall change or a substantial decrease in the overall rate of US occurrence. Pellet USs were scheduled probabilistically in the intertrial interval at either an equivalent rate (Experiment 1) or a four times higher rate (Experiments 2 and 3) than in the CS, which included one fixed-time target US. Conditioning has been said to involve learning "whether" (contingency) the CS signals a change in the US, and if so, "when" (contiguity) the US is scheduled to arrive. Our results suggest that "when" trumps "whether," challenging the received view that a positive CS-US contingency is necessary for successful conditioning.