Extinction performance as a function of incentive magnitude and number of acquisition trials

Abstract

Food deprived rats received straight runway training with either a small or large incentive (1 or 10 food pellets) for either 76 or 31 acquisition trials, followed by 30 extinction trials. At the large incentive the group given the greater number of trials exhibited less response strength in extinction whereas at the small incentive the reverse was observed. Additionally both groups given the large incentive demonstrated a more rapid decrement in extinction than their respective small magnitude groups.