Abstract

BECERRA CESPEDES, Sebastián Agustín  and  PINTO PINTO, Jorge Andrés. Conditioned Diminution and Facilitation of the Unconditioned Response in Humans. Av. Psicol. Latinoam. [online]. 2015, vol.33, n.1, pp.1-14. ISSN 1794-4724.  https://doi.org/10.12804/apl33.01.2015.01.

Conditioned diminution of the unconditioned response is a phenomenon of priming, in which the predicted or anticipated stimuli tend to be processed less effectively than when they are unexpected. This hypothesis was examined in an experiment in which a group of students received a conditioning session consisting of the presentation of a total of 132 trials of auditory and vibration stimuli, of which 66 trials corresponded to Conditioned Stimuli with Reinforcement (CS+) that co-terminated with an air puff as Unconditioned Stimulus (US), interspersed with 66 trials of Conditioned Stimuli without Reinforcement (CS-) alone. Subsequently, in a testing session, participants received a series of trials in which the unconditioned response (UR) was examined to unconditioned stimuli of high and low intensity when the stimulus was preceded by CS+ or CS-. The results showed greater amplitude of CR to the CS+ compared to the CS- during training and greater amplitude of the UR to the CS + when the CSs were tested with US low intensity while contrary to expectations, there were no significant differences in the amplitude of the UR when CSs was tested with high intensity USs. These findings are not conclusive as to whether the conditioned stimulus has two opposite ways to influence the magnitude of the unconditioned response.

Keywords : Conditioning; conditioned facilitation; conditioned diminution.

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