Similarity between shock and safe areas during acquisition, transfer, and extinction of escape behavior in rats.

Demonstrated, in 3 experiments with a total of 128 female hooded rats, that performance in escape training was impaired when shock- and safe-box stimuli were similar rather than dissimilar to each other. Prior training with similar shock and safe boxes impaired responding during subsequent training or extinction under the dissimilar shock and safe condition. Prior training under the dissimilar condition did not reliably influence subsequent training or extinction under the similar shock-safe condition. Resistance to extinction under the dissimilar condition was reliably better following training with random presentations to both similar and dissimilar conditions than following training with the dissimilar condition alone. Exp III showed that impairment of escape behavior during training was attributable to response-contingent similarity between shock and safe boxes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)