PsycNET®

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes. Vol 33(2), Apr 2007, 185-190.

Rats received habituation to either 2 compound flavors (AX and BY; the activation group) or a compound and an element alone (AX and Y; the habituation group). They also received additional presentations of Y alone either after (Experiment 1) or intermixed (Experiment 2) with habituation. In the habituation group, A had undergone habituation whereas B had not; in the activation group, both A and B had undergone habituation, but presenting Y alone should result in associative activation of B and that, according to G. Hall (2003), should increase B's efficacy. A supplementary experiment demonstrated that the presentation of Y does activate a representation of B. In both experiments, an aversion was established to AB, and subsequently the habituation group showed a greater aversion to B than to A. However, in neither experiment was there any indication that the activation group showed a greater aversion to B than to A. These results are inconsistent with the suggestion that the associative activation of a stimulus representation in the absence of the stimulus reverses the effects of habituation training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2008 APA, all rights reserved)

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