Extinction Contexts Fail to Transfer Control: Implications for Conditioned Inhibition and Occasion-Setting Accounts of Renewal

Abstract

The renewal effect is often explained as a side effect of the extinction context acting as a negative occasion setter. Four experiments tested whether extinction contexts show the selective-transfer property of occasion setters. Experiments 1–3 used a predictive judgment task where participants rated the probability of certain foods (cues) producing gastric malaise (outcomes) in different restaurants (contexts). Experiment 4 used a behavioral suppression task where sensor lights (cues) served as signals to suppress firing responses in certain galaxies (contexts). All 4 (Experiments 1–4) addressed whether a potentially negative occasion-setting context transferred its modulatory power to an extinguished (presumably occasion set) target in the test phase of an ABC renewal design. Experiments 2–4 further assessed the possibility that the extinction context acts as a conditioned inhibitor by testing a simple excitor on a context where extinction occurred. Neither selective (occasion-setting) nor nonselective transfer (conditioned inhibition) was demonstrated. Implications for theories of renewal and occasion setting are discussed.