THE ROLE OF PREDICTION AND FEEDBACK IN NO NCONTINGENT APPETITIVE CONTEXTS AND ITS INFLUENCE IN DISCRIMINATIVE LEARNING

The effect of helplessness in appetitive context and the immunization effect with predictable stimuli and feedback stimuli, was investigated . Twenty pigeons (Columba Livia) were used. The experiment was develop ed in 4 phases: training in food cup, shaping of the pecking response, pretreatment phase and test phase. In the pretreatment phase, group A was exposed to a predictable and controllable situation; group B to a n uncontrollable and predictable situation; group C to an uncontrollab le situation and feedback stimulus in the 100% of the trials; group D to an uncontrollable and unpredictable situation with aleatory events; while group E was the control group. The test phase consisted in a di scrimination learning. With this experiment it was shows, in tile firs t place, that the uncontrollable and unpredictable events in appetitiv e contexts interfere with later discriminative learning. Likewise, the stimulus which act as feedback and the stimulus which act as signal i n controllable appetitive contexts immunize against cognitive and asso ciative deficits which appear in helplessness, but not against motivat ional deficit (latency of response), obtaining therefore, semi immuniz ed subjects.