Motivational and discriminative aspects of context in renewal and reinstatement of operant behavior in mice

Abstract

Renewal, reinstatement, and other forms of recovery of learned behavior after extinction have been interpreted in terms of the concept of context. Context is defined here as the field of stimuli that is interrelated with the behavior of an individual in the present. Two important classes of stimuli that comprise context are discriminative stimuli and motivating operations. Two experiments examined interactions between discriminative and motivational aspects of context in the renewal and reinstatement of operant behavior following extinction in mice. In Experiment 1, mice received all operant acquisition and extinction sessions under 24 hr of food deprivation. In Experiment 2, mice received half of acquisition and extinction sessions under 24 hr of deprivation and the other half under nondeprived conditions. In both experiments, mice were tested for renewal and reinstatement after extinction, one group under 24 hr of deprivation and the other nondeprived. Results showed that the extent to which recovery occurred depended on relations between motivating operations (a) during acquisition/extinction learning and (b) during tests for renewal and reinstatement. Translational implications for the study of recovery of behavior after extinction in nonlaboratory circumstances are discussed.