Journal at Ftperimenlal Psych. Copyright 1985 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.

A n i m a l Behaviur Pnx-tssts
0097-740.V85/S00.75
l<)85. Vul I I . No. 3, 470-481

Differential Effects of Contextual Change on Latent Inhibition

and on the Habituation of an Orienting Response
Geoffrey Hall and Stephen Channel!
University of York, York, England

Experiment 1 monitored the habituation of the orienting response (OR) shown

by rats to a discrete visual stimulus (a 10-s light) in a given training context (A).
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Dishabituation occurred, in that the OR returned to its initial level, when the
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light was presented in a different and novel context (B). In Experiment 2 subjects
received two sessions per day, one in each of the two contexts. For experimental
subjects the light was presented in Context A until the OR habituated. In the test
phase the light was presented in Context B, but the OR was not restored,
suggesting that the dishabituation seen in Experiment 1 depended on the absolute
novelty of Context B. In Experiment 3 the rats from Experiment 2 were required
to form a light-food association in both contexts. Slow learning was observed in
rats trained with the familiar light in Context A, but learning proceeded normally
with the familiar light in Context B. Thus, a context change that failed to produce
dishabituation was enough to prevent the occurrence of a latent inhibition effect.

Several recent theories of classical condi-
tioning have attempted to give formal expres-
sion to the notion that the effectiveness of
stimuli might change as a consequence of
experience. Thus Wagner (1976; see also
Wagner, 1978, 1979, 1981) has suggested that
the repeated presentation of a stimulus alone
will allow the formation of an association
between the stimulus and the experimental
context. Presentation of the context will then
become able to prime a representation of the
stimulus into the animal's short-term mem-
ory, something that reduces the event's effec-
tiveness. A primed stimulus receives less pro-
cessing than one that is not. It is thus less
likely to evoke its unconditioned response
(i.e., habituation will occur), and its ability
to enter into a new association when it is
used as a CS (conditioned stimulus) in Pav-
lovian conditioning will be reduced (i.e., latent
inhibition will be observed). The theory pro-
posed by Pearce and Hall (1980) accounts
for latent inhibition with its suggestion that
a stimulus that is consistently followed by a
This work was supported by a grant from the United
Kingdom Science and Engineering Research Council. We
thank P. H. Venables for his comments.
Requests for reprints should be sent to Geoffrey Hall,
Department of Psychology, University of York, York Y01
5DD, England.
given consequence will suffer a loss of asso-
ciability. Unlike Wagner's theory, it does not
deal explicitly with the phenomenon of ha-
bituation, but we did not exclude the possi-
bility that some pattern of overt behavior
might reflect directly the postulated change
in associability. We have recently investigated
the unconditioned orienting response (OR)
that rats show to a discrete light stimulus
(Hall, Kaye, & Pearce, 1984; Kaye & Pearce,
1984; Pearce, Kaye, & Hall, 1983) and have
found it to show the properties that we would
expect of an index of associability. In partic-
ular, the OR has a high initial level of occur-
rence that declines when the light is presented
repeatedly followed by a consistent outcome
(a given reinforcer or no event at all).
The implications of the model proposed
by Pearce and Hall (1980) have previously
been tested by transfer-of-training studies (e.g.,
Hall & Pearce, 1979, 1982) in which changes
in associability produced by a first stage of
training have been assessed in a second stage
of classical conditioning. Studies of the ha-
bituation of the OR may supply a more direct
alternative. Wagner's theory is directly based
on studies of habituation, but it too has
derived support from transfer-of-training ex-
periments. In particular, its assertion that a
stimulus loses effectiveness because of the
formation of an association with the context

470
 CONTEXT, HABITUATION, AND LATENT INHIBITION
in which it occurs has been tested in studies
of latent inhibition in which preexposure
occurs in one context and conditioning in
another. According to Wagner (1979), the
familiar stimulus will not be primed by the
new context; it should therefore retain its
effectiveness, and latent inhibition should be
attenuated or abolished. This result has been
found in several recent studies (e.g., Channell
& Hall, 1983; Hall & Minor, 1984; Lovibond,
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Preston, & Mackintosh, 1984). It is less clear,
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however, that equivalent context specificity is
found when the effectiveness of the stimulus
is assessed by monitoring habituation of its
unconditioned response.
An investigation of the habituation of an
aggressive response in the stickleback to a
conspecific (Peeke & Veno, 1973) produced
mixed results. Presenting a new stimulus (a
different fish) in a different place (to the left
of the subject's nest rather than the right, or
vice versa) was especially effective in restoring
the habituated aggressive response of the sub-
ject. But the contextual change alone (i.e.,
the presentation of a familiar fish in a different
place) was only marginally more effective
than presenting the same fish in the same
place. Clearer results are provided by Evans
and Hammond (1983), who monitored the
extent to which the squeals of infant rats
disrupt licking for water in adults and cause
them to orient toward the source of the
sound. After preexposure in one context,
animals were tested in a different context,
and the habituated response was found to
reappear, the effect being most marked when
the test context was quite novel. These results
stand in contrast to those reported by Leaton
(1974), who also studied the habituation of
the suppression of licking in rats to an audi-
tory stimulus (a loud tone) and found no
restoration of the response when the tone
was presented in a context different from that
used for preexposure. Similarly, Marlin and
Miller (1981) found that the habituated startle
response of rats to a brief burst of white
noise, although it recovered to some extent
over the retention interval between preexpo-
sure and the test, was not especially enhanced
when the test context was novel.
There is thus only weak evidence to show
that the habituated unconditioned response
evoked by stimuli of the sort usually used as
471
CSs in studies of conditioning (and latent
inhibition) can be restored by a change of
context. Wagner's (1976) theory predicts such
a restoration but is not disconfirmed by these
failures to find it because, it can be argued,
the contexts used in the experiments by Lea-
ton (1974) and by Marlin and Miller (1981)
may not have been sufficiently different for
the subjects to discriminate the change readily.
In Experiment 1, accordingly, we investigated
the effects of contextual change on a habitu-
ated response using the two contexts previ-
ously employed (Channell & Hall, 1983) in
a study snowing that latent inhibition could
be abolished by a change from one context
to the other. The response we monitored was
that of orienting to a localized light (cf. Hall
et al., 1984; Kaye & Pearce, 1984), in part
because Evans and Hammond (1983) were
successful in finding a context effect when
they concentrated upon an OR. (It seems
likely that the responses studied by other
experimenters had major defensive compo-
nents, and it is possible that ORs and defen-
sive responses may differ in their sensitivity
to variables that affect habituation; see, e.g.,
Graham, 1979; Kimmel, 1973.) A further
advantage of using this OR is that it should
produce results relevant to the account of
changes in stimulus associability proposed by
Pearce and Hall (1980). If latent inhibition
is solely the result of the loss of stimulus
associability and this property is accurately
indexed by the occurrence of the OR, then a
restoration of the OR must be expected after
a change of context. Unlike Wagner's theory,
however, that put forward by Pearce and Hall
(1980) specifies no mechanism whereby con-
textual change might produce its effects, and
so the outcome of the experiment will help
determine in what way the theory needs to
be modified.
Experiment 1
In this experiment two groups of rats re-
ceived preexposure to a distinctive experi-
mental context (A) over a number of days.
Subjects in the experimental group received
presentations of a discrete light stimulus,
whereas those in the control group did not.
Habituation of the OR to the light in the
experimental group was monitored. All sub-
 472 GEOFFREY HALL AND STEPHEN CHANNELL
jects then received a single test session in
which the light was presented in a novel
context (B).
Method
Subjects. The subjects were 20 naive female hooded
Lister rats about 3 months old at the start of the
experiment. To allow comparison with the outcome of a
subsequent experiment in which learning supported by
food deprivation was studied, these animals were main-
tained at 85% of their free-feeding body weights by
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restricted feeding. The experiment was first conducted
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with 12 subjects and then replicated with a further 8.
Apparatus, Two identical Skinner boxes, 20 X 24 X
23 cm (from Campden Instruments Ltd.) were used. The
retractable levers were withdrawn throughout the exper-
iment. Each box was accommodated in a separate small,
dark room, allowing the door of the sound-attenuating
housing to be left open. A television camera positioned
1.2 m away and directed at the transparent plastic door
of the chamber allowed the behavior of the rat to be
monitored and recorded on a videotape recorder located
in a different room. Illumination was provided by a 30-
W strip-light above the translucent white plastic ceiling
of the chamber operated at 80 v. An exhaust fan provided
a constant background noise of 65 dBA (SPL). A 3-W
bulb operated at 24 v supplied the light stimulus. This
protruded from one of the walls of the chamber adjacent
to the door; it was 4.5 cm from the door and 10 cm
above the floor of the chamber. Centered on the same
wall at floor level was an aperture 6 cm high and 5 cm
wide, protected by a hinged plastic flap, that gave access
to a food tray. Food pellets were not delivered during
this experiment, but any openings of the flap (movement
of which actuated a microswitch) were recorded.
In addition to their being located in different rooms,
the two experimental chambers were distinguished in
other ways (see Channel! & Hall, 1983). In one (Box N)
white noise at an intensity of 70 dB was presented
continuously, and peppermint essence (approximately 2
ml, just before the start of the training session) was
sprinkled onto absorbent paper lining the tray beneath
the grid floor. In the other (Box Q) there was no white
noise, and the olfactory cue ("violets") was produced by
a similar quantity of proprietary cleaning fluid.
Procedure. All subjects received 18 daily 27-min
training sessions, half experiencing Box N and half Box
Q. There were no obvious differences in the performance
generated by N and Q, and henceforth the training
context will be referred to simply as Context A. The 10
subjects in the experimental group (5 trained in Q and
5 in N) experienced eight 10-s presentations of the light
stimulus per session, the mean interval between trials
being 3 min (range 2-4 min). Control subjects received
no light presentations, but a video recording was made
of their behavior at those times when the stimulus was
scheduled for experimental subjects. For the test session
(Session 19) all subjects were transferred to the context
that they had not experienced previously (Context B)
and received eight presentations of the light.
Scoring the OR. When the light is first presented,
rats frequently (on about 50% of trials during the first
session) turn toward it, approach it, and often rear in
front of it, making contact with the snout (Kaye &
Pearce, 1984). In order to formalize the scoring of this
pattern of behavior (which will be regarded as an OR),
a critical area was marked on the screen of the video
monitor. This corresponded to a "box" within the exper-
imental chamber 9 cm long, 6.6 cm high, and 5.6 cm
deep, with the stimulus light centered on one long wall
of the "box." On each trial (or dummy trial in the case
of the control group) the following measures were taken:
whether or not the rat's snout moved into the box, the
number of times such a response occurred, and the total
length of time for which the animal's snout was within
the box. A few sessions were scored independently by
two observers, and there proved to he close agreement
on all three measures, but especially on the trials-with-
a-response measure for which the two sets of scores never
differed. The general pattern of results was much the
same whichever of the measures was used, and thus we
concentrate for the most part on trials with a response.
Results and Discussion
Figure 1 shows for each group the mean
number of trials per session upon which an
OR was recorded. It is apparent that control
subjects tended to approach the unlit light
bulb only infrequently and that their tendency
to do so did not change over the 18 days of
exposure to Context A. Comparing their
scores for the first and last sessions revealed
no significant difference (Wilcoxon T = 0;
number of nonzero difference scores, N = 5).
Experimental subjects showed an OR on
about 50% of trials in Session 1 and differed
significantly from control subjects on this
session (Mann-Whitney U = 1 p < .01). The
frequency of this response declined over ses-
sions so that by Session 18 all experimental
animals had a lower score than that recorded
for Session 1 (T = 0, N = 10, p < .01). On
Session 18 the experimental and control
groups did not differ significantly (U = 35).
The isolated points on the right of Figure
1 show the performance of the two groups
on the test session in Context B. Both groups
showed a marked increase in responding,
confirming that the two contexts were indeed
discriminable to the subjects. Every animal
in both of the groups showed more responses
on the test session than on the final session
in Context A (T = 0, TV = 10, p < .01, for
both groups). The level of response shown by
the control subjects was particularly high and
exceeded that displayed by the experimental
subjects on their first exposure to the light.
Comparing the test performance of the control
group with the Session 1 performance of the
 CONTEXT, HABJTUATION, AND LATENT INHIBITION 473
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Days preexposure 18 Tesl

Figure 1. Experiment 1: Group mean trials per session on which an orienting response (OR) occurred
(maximum score 8) for experimental subjects (Egp) exposed to the light in Context A (AL) and for control
subjects given preexposure to Context A alone (A—). (On the test session all subjects received the light in
Context B [BLJ.)

experimental group showed the difference to
be significant (V - 13, p < .05). It seems
that prior exposure to a Skinner box enhances
the initial OR to the light. We cannot tell
from the present results whether this prior
exposure needs to occur in a slightly different
context from that used for the test for the
enhancement to occur. But the general pattern
of results is similar to that reported by Mitch-
ell, Winter, and Moffitt (1981), who found
that the rat's unconditioned response to a
novel flavor (neophobia) was enhanced by
prior exposure to the context in which the
flavor was to be presented. The test perfor-
mance of the experimental subjects showed
no special enhancement but merely returned
to approximately the level seen at the outset
of training. Comparing trials-with-a-response
scores for the test with scores for first training
sessions showed no significant difference (T =
7.5, N = 7).
The restoration of the OR in the experi-
mental group may be taken as an example
of dishabituation. The effect is to be expected
on the basis of Wagner's (1976) theory ac-
cording to which the initial habituation of
the OR depends upon the formation of an
association between Context A and the light,
allowing the context to prime a representation
of the stimulus. The novel Context B will not
prime the light, and dishabituation will occur.
Confirmation of this prediction, which ap-
pears to be unique to Wagner's theory, must
be regarded as constituting strong support
for it. Nevertheless, it is possible that other
accounts of habituation might be able to
accommodate these results. Thus Groves and
Thompson (1970) have argued against the
notion that dishabituation should be inter-
preted in terms of a mechanism that in some
way reverses the process that produces habit-
uation. Rather, they suggest, the empirical
phenomenon of dishabituation might result
from the fact that the procedures usually
used to produce it (e.g., the presentation of
a novel, salient stimulus) are likely to increase
the animal's general level of arousal. Even a
habituated stimulus might be able to evoke
its response if the animal is highly aroused.
There is some evidence to suggest that in
this experiment the change of context might
have had its effect by enhancing arousal. A
record was kept of the total number of times
per session that animals operated the flap in
front of the food tray in the hope that this
might serve as an index of their general level
of activity. Scores varied widely from one
subject to another and from day to day for a
given animal, and the difference between the
scores for the experimental group on the last
day of training (mean 16.1, median 6.5) and
on the test session (mean 18.8, median 13.0)
 474 GEOFFREY HALL AND STEPHEN CHANNELL

was not significant (T = 19.5, N = 10). But Method

the direction of the difference and the fact
that 7 of the 10 experimental subjects showed
an increase confirmed out impression, gained
from studying the videotape recordings, that
general exploratory activity occurred at a
high level during the test session.
This experiment demonstrates, therefore,
that habituation of the OR is context specific.
But it does not tell us whether the dishabit-
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The subjects were 24 naive female rats maintained as
in Experiment 1. Over the 18 days of training, each
subject received two 27-min sessions per day, one in the
morning and one (approximately 4 hr later) in the
afternoon. There were 12 subjects in each main group
(experimental or control). For half the subjects in each
group the morning session occurred in Box Q and the
afternoon session in Box N; for the remainder the
arrangement was reversed. A videotape recording was
made of the behavior shown in just one of these boxes,
which will be designated as Context A. The other box

uation observed occurs because the test con-

constituted Context B. Half of the subjects in each group
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text has not previously been associated with
the stimulus (as Wagner's theory requires) or
because the test context is a novel one that
boosts the animals' general level of arousal.
This issue is taken up in the next experiment.
Experiment 2
All subjects in this study received two
training sessions each day, one in Context A
and one in Context B. Experimental subjects
received presentations of the light in A but
not in B. The test session consisted of presen-
tations of the light in B. The familiar B
context should not be arousing in itself, but
if habituation of the OR depends upon the
existence of a context-light association, then
dishabituation should still occur.
experienced Context A as the morning session, and half
of these received Box Q rather than Box N, and so on,
in a counterbalanced fashion. The experimental subjects
received presentations of the light in Context A. The
light was not presented to the control subjects.
The procedures for the test day (Day 19) were identical
to those employed during training except that the light
was presented in Context B for all subjects. The behavior
shown in Context B was recorded.
Procedural details not specified here were the same as
for Experiment 1. The experiment was conducted in two
replications.
Results and Discussion
Figure 2 shows for each group the mean
number of trials per session on which an OR
occurred, for the 18 training sessions in Con-
text A and the test session in Context B. The
results for the training sessions are closely

i 3
Ifl
o
£ 2

Days preexposure in A 18 Test

inB

Figure 2. Group mean trials per session on which an orienting response (OR) occurred in Experiment 2
during preexposure to Context A and test in Context B. (All subjects received two sessions per day.
Experimental subjects [Egp] experienced the light in A [AL] but not in B [B—] during preexposure;
control subjects [Cgp] received the light in neither [A-/B-]. On the test the light was presented in B [BL]
for all subjects.)
 CONTEXT, HABITUATION, AND LATENT INHIBITION
similar to those reported for Experiment 1.
Thus, experimental subjects had a signifi-
cantly higher score than did controls on the
first day of training (U = 8.5, p < .01) but
showed a significant decline from Day 1 to
Day 18 (T = 0, N = 11, p < .01) so that
there was no difference between the two
groups on the final training day (U = 48).
As in Experiment 1, the first presentation
of the light for control subjects (on the test
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session in Context B) readily elicited the OR.
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Comparing the number of trials on which a
response occurred for the last day of training
and the test session in Context B showed a
significant difference (T - 0, N - 12, p <
.01). And, as before, the level of response
shown by control subjects exceeded that
shown by the experimental subjects when
they first experienced the light (U = 23.5,
p < .05, for the comparison of the Session 1
performance of the experimental subjects with
the test performance of the control subjects).
In contrast to the effect seen in Experiment
1, however, presenting the light in a context
different from that used for pretraining did
not restore responding in the experimental
group. Comparing the OR scores (Figure 2)
for the last day of training with those shown
on the test session revealed no significant
difference (T = 12, N = 8). Because this null
result is of central theoretical importance, we
examined other measures of performance for
signs of dishabituation in the experimental
subjects. Scoring the total number of ORs
yielded a group mean of 1.30 on Day 18 and
1.60 on the test day. A difference that was
not significant (T = 24.5, N = 10). The group
mean score for the length of time that the
rat's head was within the "box" around the
stimulus light was 1.10 s on Day 18 and 1.61
s on the test day. Again the difference was
not significant (T = 24.5, N= 11).
Experiment I demonstrated that the two
contexts used in this experiment are discrim-
inable to the rat and also that our measure
of the OR can be sensitive to contextual
change. Nonetheless, we were unable to detect
an effect of contextual change on the habit-
uated OR in this experiment when the test
context was familiar to the subjects. This
outcome makes it difficult to accept Wagner's
(1976) account of the effect seen in Experi-
ment 1. The restoration of the OR in that
475
experiment depends upon the fact that the
test context was novel (and presumably
arousing) and not on the absence of a context-
stimulus association, because in the present
experiment there was similarly no association
between the test context and the light, but
the OR was not restored. This is not to assert
that a context-stimulus association was not
formed during training—the results of exper-
iments by Marlin (1982) and Rescorla (1984)
indicate that such associations are readily
formed. Nor indeed can our conclusions,
based as they are in part on a null result,
constitute a demonstration that context-
stimulus associations never play a role in
habituation. But they do mean that an im-
portant role must be assigned to the effects
produced by the novelty of the context and
that any associative effect must be relatively
small in comparison.
Experiment 3
The results of the previous experiments
mean that an account of habituation in terms
of context-stimulus associations must be re-
garded as being, at best, incomplete. It re-
mains possible, however, that the strength of
the OR (whatever its determinants) might
still constitute a valid index of the extent to
which a stimulus will receive processing. Ex-
periment 1 showed that transfer from Context
A to a novel Context B restored the habituated
OR to a light. Channel! and Hall (1983) used
this experimental design and the same phys-
ical contexts in their demonstration that latent
inhibition effect is abolished by a change of
context. Thus the associability of the stimulus
(as assessed by its readiness to form an
association with a reinforcer) accords with
its effectiveness as assessed by the measure of
its ability to evoke an OR.
An implication of this interpretation, given
the results of Experiment 2, is that latent
inhibition should not be attentuated by a
change of context when the test context is
familiar to the animal and does not restore
the OR. This implication was investigated in
the present experiment. If it proves well
founded, it will remain possible to retain the
assumption (Hall et al., 1984) that the strength
of the OR can supply a direct indication of
the associability of a stimulus. Wagner (1976)
 476 GEOFFREY HALL AND STEPHEN CHANNELL
also, of course, assumes that long-term ha-
bituation and latent inhibition are a conse-
quence of the same process.
It should be acknowledged that previous
studies of latent inhibition have found it to
be context specific even when conditioning
occurred in a context with which the subjects
were already familiar (Hall & Minor, 1984;
Lovibond et al., 1984). But the training pro-
cedures used in those experiments were very
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different from those employed here, and it is
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possible that they were effective in restoring
the OR when the present procedures were
not. It is necessary, therefore, to examine the
effects of transfer to a different but familiar
context in a procedure for which the effects
on the OR are known.
Method
The subjects were the 24 rats from Experiment 2, and
this experiment constituted a direct continuation of that
study.
The animals continued to receive two sessions per day,
one in Context A and one in Context B. For the first 2
days the subjects received magazine training. During
each 30-min session, 45-mg food pellets were delivered
according to a variable time 60-s schedule. All subjects
readily learned to push aside the flap guarding the
entrance to the food tray and to retrieve the pellets.
There followed 5 days of appetitive conditioning. On
each session there were eight presentations of the 10-s
light, scheduled as before, the offset of which was accom-
panied by the delivery of a food pellet. A record was
kept of the number of flap entries occurring during the
light and during the 10-s period immediately preceding
each trial.
Results
Conditioning was assessed in terms of the
rats' tendency to enter the food tray in antic-
ipation of food delivery (as in Channell &
Hall, 1983). To attenuate the effects of indi-
vidual differences in the baseline rate of this
response, a ratio measure was used: flap
entries during the light 4- flap entries during
the light + entries during the prestimulus pe-
riod. Scores below .5 represent a suppression
during the light and scores above .5 an en-
hancement of responding.
The ratio scores of the various groups were
derived from approximately equivalent base-
line rates of response. Pooling all 5 days of
conditioning yielded, for the experimental
group, a mean score of 24.92 flap entries per
..-*
2
|.S
£
Egp(AL/B-) ._„.*!;;
1 2 3 4 5
Days conditioning
Figure 3. Experiment 3: Group mean flap entry responses
during the light expressed as a ratio of prestimulus
response rate. (For all subjects the light was reinforced
both in Context A [AL+] and in Context B [BL+], and
performance in the two contexts is shown separately. The
experimental group [Egp] had been preexposed to the
light in A but not in B [AL/B—]; the control group [Cgpj
had experienced the contexts alone [A—/B—].)
session during prestimulus periods in Context
A and 18.50 in Context B. The equivalent
scores for the control subjects were 24.67 in
Context A and 18.25 in Context B. There
was no significant difference among the scores
for these four conditions (Kruskal-Wallis H =
3.53, rf/= 3).
The course of conditioning is shown in
Figure 3. The performance of each group is
shown separately for the two contexts (A and
B) in which conditioning took place. For the
experimental group Context A was that in
which the light was preexposed during train-
ing, whereas, apart from the single test session,
these subjects had not previously experienced
the light in B. The distinction between the
Contexts A and B for the control subjects is
purely arbitrary. These subjects had not ex-
perienced the light in either during training,
and each mean score includes the results of
animals that experienced Box N in the morn-
ing and Box Q in the afternoon, and vice
versa.
Inspection of the figure shows that the
initial effect of the light was to suppress flap-
 CONTEXT, HABITUATION, AND LATENT INHIBITION
entry responding. If, as seems likely, this
suppression was a result of competition from
the ORs that the light elicits, then it is of
significance that the experimental subjects
were no less suppressed than the control
group in spite of the low level of OR respond-
ing they showed on the test day of Experiment
2. We took no direct measure of the OR in
this study, but the implication that the habit-
uated OR is rapidly restored by the introduc-
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tion of a conditioning procedure is confirmed
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by resulted reported by Kaye and Pearce
(1984, Experiment 5). These investigators,
using a conditioning procedure similar to
ours, found that a habituated OR returned
to its initial level within a session of the start
of conditioning.
After the initial suppressive effect of the
light had been overcome, conditioning was
apparent in all conditions, all ratio scores
rising well above .5 by the end of training.
As might be expected, the control group
learned equally readily in the two contexts.
Comparing their mean ratio scores for all 5
days of conditioning showed there to be no
significant difference (T= 17, N= 12). Ex-
perimental subjects, on the other hand,
learned more readily in Context B than in
Context A. Comparing their mean overall
scores for the two contexts showed T = 10,
N= 12, p < .05, and all but one of the
subjects had higher ratio scores in Context B
than in Context A. The performance of ex-
perimental subjects in Context B was closely
similar to that shown by the control subjects.
Because control subjects behaved similarly in
Contexts A and B, a single score was generated
for each control animal by taking the mean
of all sessions. Comparing these with the
mean scores of experimental subjects in Con-
text B showed there to be no significant
difference (U = 69). Comparison of control
performance with that shown by experimental
animals in Context A showed t / = 4 1 . 5 ,
.05 <p< .1.
Discussion
The slow learning shown by the experi-
mental subjects in Context A may be taken
as a case of latent inhibition. The relatively
rapid learning that occurred in Context B
means that the effect was context specific,
477
being found only in the context in which the
light was presented during initial training.
Taken together with the results of Experi-
ment 2, these findings provide evidence of a
dissociation of habituation and latent inhi-
bition—the latter effect was obscured or abol-
ished by a context change that was insufficient
to restore the habituated OR (Experiment 2).
This dissociation could be of importance for
those theories (Wagner, 1976; Pearce et al.,
1983) that suggest that the associability of a
stimulus and its ability to evoke the OR
should covary, and possible interpretations of
this dissociation form the focus of the General
Discussion below. Our present discussion
concerns the source of the context specificity
observed in this experiment.
The pattern of results reported here not
only demonstrates the context specificity of
latent inhibition but also implies that condi-
tioning itself may be context specific (cf.
Balaz, Capra, Hartl, & Miller, 1981; Bouton
& Bolles, 1979). Because latent inhibition
proved to be context specific, learning oc-
curred rapidly for the experimental subjects
in Context B. Nonetheless, acquisition of the
CR proceeded relatively slowly in Context A,
suggesting that the associative strength ac-
quired by the light in B did not generalize
fully back to A. Lovibond et al. (1984) list
several possible mechanisms that might be
responsible for context specificity in condi-
tioning. One is that a given stimulus might
impinge on the animal in different ways in
different contexts so that a change of context
would induce a generalization decrement.
Although we cannot rule out this possibility,
the results of Experiment 2 argue against it.
Habituated responses are sensitive to changes
in the nature of the stimulus (Sokolov, 1963),
and if the change from Context A to Context
B were to change the perceived properties of
the light, a restoration of the OR would be
expected. The failure of Experiment 2 to
reveal such a restoration suggests that the
effective properties of the light did not differ
in the two contexts.
A further possibility considered by Lovi-
bond et al. (1984) is that conditioned re-
sponding may fail to transfer from one context
to another because the CR will appear at full
strength only when the excitation governed
by the CS can summate with the excitatory
 478 GEOFFREY HALL AND STEPHEN CHANNELL
strength that the contextual stimuli will
themselves have acquired. Thus, in their Ex-
periment Ib Lovibond et al. found evidence
of context specificity when subjects were given
training in one context and subsequently
tested with the CS in a different context not
previously associated with the reinforcer. Us-
ing a test context in which reinforcers had
previously occurred (Experiment Ic) abol-
ished the effect. The present experiment is in
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principle equivalent to Lovibond et al.'s Ex-
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periment Ic in that our subjects were equally
familiar with Contexts A and B and received
equal numbers of reinforcers in the two con-
texts. Nevertheless, we still found evidence
for context specificity. It, therefore, remains
to explain both the source of the effect that
we observed and the reason why no effect
was apparent in the formally similar experi-
ment by Lovibond et al.
The latter issue is difficult to resolve. There
are many procedural differences between the
two experiments, several of which could
plausibly be held responsible for the difference
in outcome. Most striking, perhaps, is the
fact that Lovibond et al. (1984) used a suc-
cessive procedure in which conditioning to
the target CS was completed before test ses-
sions in the new context were begun. Our
experiment, by contrast, used a concurrent
procedure, with the animals experiencing
training in both contexts each day. We may
speculate that the concurrent procedure is
more likely to generate or to provide a more
sensitive measure of context specificity than
is the successive procedure, but there are
clearly a number of other possibilities, and
further discussion would be fruitless in the
absence of new empirical results.
The source of the context specificity ob-
served in our experiment, both in condition-
ing and in the latent inhibition effect itself,
is equally difficult to identify. Theoretically,
the most interesting of the possibilities listed
by Lovibond et al. (1984) is the suggestion
that the context can come to serve as a
conditional cue signaling the relation that
holds between a CS and its consequences. In
the case of latent inhibition, for instance, the
context might function to aid the retrieval of
a CS-nothing association that, therefore, in-
terferes with further learning about the CS
but only when the context remains the same.
Such a suggestion is entirely consistent with
our demonstration of context specificity in
conditioning where we may assume that Con-
text B allows the retrieval of a strong CS-
food association, whereas Context A allows
the retrieval of only a weak association. It
finds no support, however, in other experi-
mental results reported by Lovibond et al.
(1984). When they equated the degree to
which subjects were familiar with the two
contexts, these workers were not able to
demonstrate context specificity in condition-
ing; however, they were able to find the effect
in latent inhibition. They rejected the con-
ditional-cue account of the effect, however,
on the grounds that the conditioned response
acquired in the test context generalized back
perfectly to the context in which CS-preex-
posure had initially occurred, a context that
should, theoretically, have promoted the re-
trieval of a CS-nothing association.
If we are to reject the conditional-cue
account of context specificity, as it seems we
must, then we are left without an explanation
for the effects demonstrated here. Alternative
explanations that suggest themselves are, at
the moment, no more than speculation, and
we will not present them here. We shall turn
instead to a consideration of the implications
of the empirical findings reported here for
current theories of habituation and latent
inhibition.
General Discussion
The results reported here show that the
habituated OR to a light stimulus is restored
when the stimulus is presented in a different
and novel context but remains habituated
when the test context is familiar to the subject.
Nonetheless, the stimulus is learned about
more readily in a classical conditioning par-
adigm when training is given in a familiar
context not previously associated with the
light than when it occurs in the context in
which the light was originally presented. These
findings have implications for interpretations
of dishabituation, of the relation between
habituation and latent inhibition, and for
interpretations of the role played by ORs in
classical conditioning.
Dishabituation
Wagner's (1976) associative account of
long-term habituation attributes it to the
 CONTEXT, HABITUATION, AND LATENT INHIBITION
formation of context-stimulus associations.
Dishabituation (taken here to mean the res-
toration of an habituated response by prior
presentation of a novel, salient stimulus) can
thus be accounted for by assuming that the
novel stimulus brings about a change in the
effective context so that the next target stim-
ulus is not primed in the usual way. This
account implies, therefore, that a habituated
response should also be restored if the stim-
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ulus is presented in a new context that has
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not previously been associated with the stim-
ulus. The studies reviewed earlier reveal that
direct tests of this suggestion have produced
mixed results, the only clear cut dishabitua-
tion effect being that reported by Evans and
Hammond (1983). In their experiment the
effect was most marked when the test envi-
ronment was quite novel and was reduced in
subjects that had been exposed to the test
environment before the start of habituation
training. These results accord, therefore, with
those reported here and prompt a nonasso-
ciative interpretation of dishabituation.
Groves and Thompson (1970; see also
Thompson, Groves, Teyler, & Roemer, 1973)
have argued that stimulation will raise an
organism's general level of excitation but that
the enhanced tendency to respond to a given
stimulus can be outweighed by an indepen-
dent decremental effect produced by repeated
stimulation. According to this dual-process
theory, "dishabituation" occurs because a
novel stimulus (or context) raises the level of
excitation, not because of any increase in the
effectiveness of the target stimulus itself. In
contrast to associative priming theory, there-
fore, the dual-process account predicts that
dishabituation should not occur when the
test context is familiar (and not arousing), a
prediction borne out by our findings.
As we said earlier, the model proposed by
Pearce and Hall (1980) specifies no mecha-
nism whereby contextual change might mod-
ify the effectiveness of a stimulus. If the OR
accurately reflects the associability of a stim-
ulus, then there is nothing in the theory to
suggest that a habituated OR should reappear
when the stimulus is presented in a new
context. The results of Experiment 1, there-
fore, make it plain that some role for the
effects of context must be allowed in the
theory. Perhaps the simplest way of doing
this is to add the assumption that the asso-
479
ciability of a stimulus depends in part upon
the animal's general level of arousal. Adding
this assumption requires many other processes
to be specified (in particular the way in which
arousal changes according to the novelty of
the context), but it accords with the experi-
mental results and fits comfortably with the
other assumptions of the theory.
Habituation and Latent Inhibition
Repeated presentation of a stimulus will
produce a short-term decline in responsive-
ness, but an effect still remains when the
stimulus is presented again in a new training
session, say, a day later. The procedure for
studying long-term habituation is thus iden-
tical to that used in experiments on latent
inhibition, the latter differing only in that the
effectiveness of the stimulus is assessed by
measuring the ease with which it becomes a
CS. It is thus not surprising to find that many
of the procedural factors known to influence
the magnitude of habituation (such as the
number of preexposure trials, the insertion
of a novel distractor, changes in the target
stimulus, and so on; see, e.g., Lantz, 1973;
Siegel, 1969) also affect latent inhibition.
These considerations have prompted the sug-
gestion that a common mechanism underlies
both phenomena (e.g., Wagner, 1976).
The differential effects of contextual change
reported here (Experiments 2 and 3) consti-
tute a demonstration of a dissociation between
latent inhibition and habituation. They thus
pose a problem for Wagner's (1976) theory.
They have extra significance in that the ha-
bituated response studied here was a clear
OR rather than a defensive or startle response.
Previous work has shown that the habituation
of these latter responses obeys different rules
from those predicted by the assumption that
habituation and latent inhibition share a
common mechanism (see, e.g., Marlin &
Miller, 1981). But, given that different uncon-
ditioned responses may show different pat-
terns of habituation, the possibility remained
open that latent inhibition was the direct
result of the habituation of the OR. Our
results argue against this possibility, and thus
they also pose a problem for the account of
the OR proposed by Pearce et al. (1983; see
also Hall et al., 1984; Kaye & Pearce, 1984).
This account suggests that the frequency of
 480 GEOFFREY HALL AND STEPHEN
occurrence of the OR might provide a direct
index of the associability of a stimulus, and
thus it too expects that the OR and latent
inhibition should covary.
It might be possible to retain these theories
without serious modification if it could be
allowed that latent inhibition is a much more
sensitive measure of the effectiveness of a
stimulus than is the readiness with which an
OR is evoked. We must admit, however, that
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there is nothing in our data to support this
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argument and some evidence from other
sources that runs counter to it. Kaye and
Pearce (1984, Experiment 5) examined ap-
petitive conditioning with a light CS and
approach to the food tray as the conditioned
response in two groups of rats, one of which
had received prior habituation to the light.
The latent inhibition effect produced by
preexposure was small and fell short of sta-
tistical significance, but there was, initially, a
large and reliable difference between the two
groups in their orienting to the light. These
results suggest that it is the OR rather than
latent inhibition that is the more sensitive
index of the effectiveness of the stimulus.
Perhaps we are obliged to accept, therefore,
that the dissociation found in our experiments
reflects a difference of functional significance
in the mechanisms responsible for habituation
and for latent inhibition. This interpretation
finds support in existing demonstrations that
certain procedures can affect habituation and
latent inhibition differently. For example, ha-
bituation proceeds more readily when the
interval between successive stimulus presen-
tations is short, whereas latent inhibition
tends to be more profound when trials are
spaced (Lantz, 1973; Schnur & Lubow, 1976).
Again, habituation proceeds more readily
with a less intense stimulus, whereas there is
some evidence to suggest that latent inhibition
is more severe when the stimulus is salient
(Schnur & Lubow, 1976).
More direct evidence comes from studies
that monitor the unconditioned responding
elicited by the target stimulus in a latent
inhibition experiment. Again the two effects
appear to be separable. Lubow, Weiner, and
Schnur (1981) cite an unpublished experiment
by Krauter in which the habituation of the
startle response to an auditory cue was found
to be independent of the associability of the
stimulus as assessed in a conditioned suppres-
CHANNELL
sion procedure. Weiss, Friedman, and Mc-
Gregor (1974) measured the unconditioned
suppression of a licking response produced
by presentation of a tone and found that
habituation occurred equally readily in intact
animals and rats with septal lesions. But in a
conditioning task with this same stimulus,
the clear latent inhibition effect found in
normal animals was abolished by the lesion.
Several of the phenomena cited above are
open to a range of explanations, and it re-
mains to be firmly established that separate
mechanisms, differing in features of theoret-
ical significance, underlie habituation and
latent inhibition. But there is enough evidence
to establish a prima facie case and to suggest
that modifications might need to be made to
those theories that derive habituation of the
OR and latent inhibition from a single mech-
anism. If, for instance, we retain the asump-
tion of Pearce et al. (1983) that the attention
paid to a stimulus is accurately assessed by
its ability to evoke an OR, then we must
conclude that loss of attention revealed during
habituation is not the sole, or even major,
source of latent inhibition. The only real
alternative to an attentional account of latent
inhibition so far proposed is provided by the
suggestion that "associative interference"
(Revusky, 1971) occurs between what is
learned during stimulus preexposure and the
conditioning subsequently required (see, e.g.,
Baker & Mercier, 1982; Weiss & Brown,
1974). If associative interference was indeed
the basis for the latent inhibition seen in
Experiment 3, then we must assume that the
information acquired in preexposure fails to
transfer when the stimulus is presented in a
new context. We have already argued that
the results of Experiment 3 provide evidence
in favor of the existence of context specificity
in conditioning, but we have also already
acknowledged that the source of such effects
still remains to be identified.
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Received August 21, 1984
Revision received December 3, 1984