Renewal of extinguished lever-press responses upon return to the training context

Two experiments with rats explored renewal effects in operant conditioning preparations. When pressing a lever was trained in one context and then ext inguished in a second context, the responding was renewed by returning to t he original context (ABA renewal) in Experiment 1. This finding was replica ted in Experiment 2 with discriminative operant performance signaled by a l ocalized light cue. In spite of the successful demonstration of ABA renewal effect in these experiments, AAB renewal was detected in neither experimen t: When the responses had been extinguished in the context of acquisition, testing the rats in a second context did not renew the responses. The demon stration of ABA renewal but no AAB renewal suggests that extinction in anot her context and/or a return to the original context are critical for renewa l of extinguished operant performance. (C) 2000 Academic Press.