Learning About Trial Sequences Disrupts the Partial Reinforcement Extinction Effect in Classical Conditioning

The partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) refers to the phenomenon that conditioned responding extinguishes more slowly if subjects had been inconsistently ("partially") reinforced than if they had been reinforced on every trial ("continuously" reinforced). One largely successful account of the PREE, known as sequential theory (Capaldi, 1966), suggests that, when subjects are partially reinforced, they learn that memories of sequences of nonreinforced trials are associated with subsequent reinforcement. This association helps to maintain responding (i.e., delay extinction) when the subjects experience nonreinforced trials during extinction. Sequential theory's explanation of the PREE hinges on subjects learning sequences of nonreinforced trials during acquisition. However, direct evidence for such sequential learning is not available in previous studies of the PREE where animals are trained with multiple sequences of different lengths that are randomly intermixed and, therefore, cannot anticipate whether a given trial will be reinforced during acquisition. The current study conducted two experiments that trained rats with a single fixed trial sequence to provide evidence of sequential learning during conditioning, and then observe its effect on the PREE. Under one condition the rats did learn about the fixed sequence but did not subsequently show a PREE, whereas other rats that did show a PREE had not learned the trial sequences during conditioning. Therefore, contrary to sequential theory's prediction, our result suggests that learning about the trial sequence is neither necessary nor sufficient for the PREE. We suggest that the PREE may instead depend on uncertainty about whether the conditioned stimulus will be reinforced.