COMPOUND CONDITIONING IN HONEYBEES - BLOCKING TESTS OF THE INDEPENDENCE ASSUMPTION

Six experiments with color-odor compounds failed to produce convincing evidence of blocking in honeybees even when the possibility of maskin g by within-compound association could be discounted. The parsimonious assumption that the components of a compound stimulus gain and lose a ssociative strength independently with reinforcement and nonreinforcem ent of the compounds (which the experiments were designed to challenge ) remains tenable for color-odor compounds, although perhaps not for i ntramodal compounds.