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Review
. 2017 Apr:137:64-72.
doi: 10.1016/j.beproc.2016.10.003. Epub 2016 Oct 6.

Occasion setting, inhibition, and the contextual control of extinction in Pavlovian and instrumental (operant) learning

Sydney Trask  1 , Eric A Thrailkill  1 , Mark E Bouton  2
Affiliations
Review

Occasion setting, inhibition, and the contextual control of extinction in Pavlovian and instrumental (operant) learning

Sydney Trask et al. Behav Processes. 2017 Apr.

Abstract

An occasion setter is a stimulus that modulates the ability of another stimulus to control behavior. A rich history of experimental investigation has identified several important properties that define occasion setters and the conditions that give rise to occasion setting. In this paper, we first consider the basic hallmarks of occasion setting in Pavlovian conditioning. We then review research that has examined the mechanisms underlying the crucial role of context in Pavlovian and instrumental extinction. In Pavlovian extinction, evidence suggests that the extinction context can function as a negative occasion setter whose role is to disambiguate the current meaning of the conditioned stimulus; the conditioning context can also function as a positive occasion setter. In operant extinction, in contrast, the extinction context may directly inhibit the response, and the conditioning context can directly excite it. We outline and discuss the key results supporting these distinctions.

Keywords: Behavioral extinction; Contextual control; Inhibitory learning; Occasion setting.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Results from the testing phase of Experiment 4 from Bouton et al. (2016). See text for details.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Effect of a context switch on instrumental responding after either 90 response-reinforcer pairings (left) or 360 response-reinforcer pairings (right). After instrumental training, but before the tests shown, the paired groups received separate pairings of the reinforcer with lithium chloride (to condition an aversion to it) and the unpaired groups received the reinforcer and lithium chloride unpaired. The reinforcer devaluation effect at left suggests that the response was an action after 90 reinforcers; the lack of a reinforcer devaluation effect at right suggests that the response was a habit there. Notice that the context switch affected the habit (right). It also affected responding at left, but only that which remained after devaluation (responding made out of habit); it did not affect the size of the reinforcer devaluation effect (the evidence of action). Adapted from Thrailkill and Bouton (2015b).
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