TRANSFER OF OCCASION SETTING ACROSS STIMULUS AND RESPONSE IN OPERANT FEATURE POSITIVE DISCRIMINATIONS

Two experiments examined transfer of stimulus control after discrete-t rial operant serial feature positive discrimination (X --> A + /A -) t raining in rats. Transfer of the X feature's ability to facilitate res ponding to a subsequent target cue was nearly complete if the transfer target had been trained as the target in another serial feature posit ive discrimination, even if that target controlled a different operant than controlled by the original A target. Repeated presentations of X alone had little effect on performance to either the original or tran sfer test compounds. In contrast, transfer to a separately trained and extinguished target was smaller and occurred only if the original and transfer target controlled the same operant. Furthermore that transfe r was eliminated by nonreinforced feature presentations. Implications of these data for hypotheses about the nature of occasion setting in o perant conditioning were discussed. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.