Ease of Conditioning and Spontaneous Recovery From Experimental Extinction

Thirty adult male volunteers were conditioned and extinguished in a classical eyeblink conditioning situation to the same criterion and tested 24 hours later for the pattern of spontaneous recovery (reminiscence) and re‐extinction. As predicted in terms of the decay of inhibition explanation of reminiscence phenomena, those subjects who required most reinforcements to attain the criterion of conditioning and least repetition of the conditioned stimulus to attain the criterion of extinction were also the subjects who showed greatest reminiscence. Certain limitations and possible applications of these findings are discussed

Audiology · Classical conditioning · Cognitive psychology · Conditioning · Developmental psychology · Extinction (optical mineralogy) · Measures of conditioned emotional response · Optics · Physics · Reminiscence · Spontaneous recovery · Statistics · Stimulus (psychology) · Unconditioned stimulus · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Identity, Memory, and Therapy · Mathematics · Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Research · Psychology