Novelty of contextual cues in taste aversion learning

The purpose of this experiment was to test the theory of Lubow, Rifkin, and Alek (1976) concerning the effects of stimulus preexposure on later learning. This hypothesis predicts that conditioning will occur faster when either the stimulus or the testing environment is novel relative to the other than when the stimulus and the environment are equally novel or equally familiar. The theory was tested in a taste aversion conditioning paradigm in which groups of rats were presented with either the familiar (preexposed) solution or the novel nonpreexposed solution, in either the familiar or the novel environment. Conditioning was affected by the novelty of both the stimulus and the environment, with novel stimuli enhancing learning and novel environments retarding it. However, no interaction between stimulus and environmental novelty was evident, and thus Lubow’s hypothesis was not confirmed.