Reminder: Similar and differential effects in amnesic and weakly trained rats

Abstract

Two experiments investigated the effectiveness of reminder treatments in potentiating memory in subjects given either strong fear conditioning and ECS or weak fear conditioning. In Experiment I, reminder increased memory in both groups. Experiment II substantiated this finding under somewhat different conditions and also showed that, in one reminder condition, increased memory was obtained in subjects fear conditioned and given ECS while no effect was noted in subjects given weak fear conditioning. The finding of differential modification of memory with reminder in these two groups suggests that a previous interpretation, based on the usual finding of parallel modification with reminder in these groups, may be incorrect. Moreover, these data suggest that the major effect of ECS is on memory retrieval processes.