Dissociations Between ABA-, ABC-, and AAB-Renewal of Pavlovian Modulation in Human Sequential Feature Positive Discrimination Learning

Using a conditioned suppression preparation, we investigated extinction and aba-, abc-, and aab-renewal of Pavlovian modulation in human sequential Feature Positive (FP) discrimination learning, X → A+/A−. Extinction treatment was administered in the acquisition context a (aaa- and aab-groups) or in a new context b (aba- and abc-groups) and comprised X → A− extinction trials. Discriminative X → A/A responding was lost in all groups when tested in the extinction context. In the aba-group, the discriminative X → A/A responding totally recovered when retested in the acquisition context a. For the aaa-, the aab-, and the abc-group, discriminative X → A/A responding did not reappear when tested for renewal in, respectively, contexts a, b, and c. The demonstration of aba-renewal of extinguished modulation, but not abc- and aab-renewal, suggests that extinction in a context different from the acquisition context and a return to the original acquisition context might both be critical for renewal of Pavlovian modulation in human FP-discrimination learning.