Albertella Lucy, Boakes Robert A
School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
J Exp Psychol Anim Behav Process. 2006 Oct;32(4):386-95. doi: 10.1037/0097-7403.32.4.386.
Almond preferences were produced by giving rats a mixture of almond and sucrose (Experiments 1-4) or saccharin (Experiment 4). A subsequent extinction procedure consisted of either repeated 2-bottle almond versus water tests (Experiment 1) or repeated exposure to almond alone (Experiments 2-4). The main independent variable was whether access to food following a session was given immediately, 30 min later, or 120 min later. No effect of extinction was found in any experiment. An important finding was that varying the delay until food access had no detectable effect. It was concluded that inadvertent flavor-food associations do not maintain preference for the flavor under extinction conditions.
