MANIPULATION OF COMPONENTS OF CONTEXT - THE CONTEXT SHIFT EFFECT AND FORGETTING OF STIMULUS ATTRIBUTES

Seventy-two Sprague-Dawley rats were used to investigate the multidime nsional features of the context shift and the forgetting of stimulus a ttributes in a Pavlovian differential fear conditioning paradigm. One day after training, a change in either conditioning box or room contex t resulted in substantial decrements in performance similar to that in duced by a shift of both box and room contexts. Two weeks after traini ng, a shift of either box or room context exerted no significant detri mental effects on responding. However, a combined shift of both box an d room contexts still induced a severe performance deficit. These resu lts suggest that changes in various components of the stimulus context can result in similar retention deficits, that several aspects of sti mulus attributes are forgotten over a delay, and that changing several aspects of the stimulus complex can synergistically impair performanc e. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.