A RETRIEVAL CUE FOR EXTINCTION ATTENUATES RESPONSE RECOVERY (RENEWAL) CAUSED BY A RETURN TO THE CONDITIONING CONTEXT

When conditioning and extinction are conducted in different contexts, a return to the conditioning context causes a renewal of conditioned responding. The results of 4 experiments with rats in an appetitive conditioning preparation suggest that renewal results from a failure to retrieve extinction outside the extinction context. Presentation of a cue from extinction during renewal testing attenuated the renewal effect; attenuation depended on the cue's correlation with extinction. On its own, the cue did not elicit responding, suggesting it was not a conditioned exciter; it also failed tests for conditioned inhibition. The authors propose that it worked by retrieving a memory of extinction. The findings parallel previous results with spontaneous recovery and are thus consistent with the view that renewal and spontaneous recovery result from a common mechanism.