ABSTRACT
Contextual stimuli are present at the time of unconditional stimulus (US) occurrence regardless of the presence of a discrete conditioned stimulus (CS) and are differentially reinforced with respect to other stimuli in the organism's life. Therefore, the conditions are present for learning about CS, and it should be possible to determine the nature of this learning using techniques borrowed from our analysis of conditioning of discrete CSs. Moreover, the author argues that there are two major reasons why reductions in baseline rates of responding cannot be used as independent evidence of context conditioning when the target response involves conditioned suppression of instrumental responding. Specifically, a discrete nontarget CS is used to signal the occurrence of shock USs during the preexposure phase, and conditioned suppression training is then carried out with a different target CS. In addition, a discrimination procedure was used during the preexposure phase to maximize chances of maintaining differentiation between the two contexts during conditioned suppression training.
