Inhibitory stimulus control of the classically conditioned nictitating membrane response of the rabbit

Abstract

Pavlovian conditioned inhibition training provides a method for investigating inhibitory dimensional stimulus control of the rabbit’s conditioned nictitating membrane response. The basic technique consists of reinforcing a burst of white noise while a compound made up of white noise and a tone is systematically not reinforced. Generalization tests to the white noise and a series of test tones result in a U-shaped gradient which remains relatively stable over a series of training-test phases.