Multiple Cue Extinction Effects on Recovery of Responding in Causal Judgments

Abstract

Many experiments have demonstrated recovery of extinguished responding following a context change and some experiments have shown that extinction in multiple contexts can reduce this response recovery. We report two additional experiments which both showed reduced response recovery following extinction in the presence of multiple partner cues. These experiments also showed reduced response recovery following acquisition in the presence of multiple partner cues. The effect of the multiple extinction treatment was present in tests carried out in presence of the original training cue (ABA design) as well as in the presence of a novel test cue (ABC design), suggesting the effect was mediated by the associative strength of the target cue, rather than by the strength of the partner cue. However, the effect of the multiple acquisition treatment was only present in the ABA design, suggesting this effect was mediated by the associative strength of the partner cues, not by the strength of the target cue.