Abstract
The effects of a pretrial, priming US were investigated in the context of eyeblink conditioning in the rabbit. The administration of a priming US, 4 or 9 sec prior to a CS-US pairing, facilitated the performance of conditioned responding to the CS but decreased the subsequent evidence of conditioning resulting from the pairing. The results are congruent with those from prior studies of CS and US priming in eyeblink conditioning and are consistent with the expectations from a processing model of Pavlovian conditioning (Wagner, 1981) that has been based largely on studies of priming.
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The research reported was supported in part by National Science Founation Grant BNS 80-23399 to Allan R. Wagner. W. S. Terry is at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
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Terry, W.S., Wagner, A.R. The effects of US priming on CR performance and acquisition. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 23, 249–252 (1985). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329840
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329840