Potentiation and overshadowing in preweanling and adult rats.

Four experiments compared the aversion acquired by 18-day-old and 60-day-old rats to a flavor that was either tasted alone or in combination, simultaneously or successively, with another flavor when paired with illness. The purpose was to study temporal variables and theoretical issues pertinent to potentiation and overshadowing while investigating ontogenetic differences in these phenomena. When either the preweanlings or the adults were presented a simultaneous compound flavor (sucrose/coffee) followed by lithium chloride-induced illness, greater sucrose aversions were found than for animals conditioned on sucrose alone--that is, potentiation. Preweanlings demonstrated greater potentiation than did adults, whether the conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) delay was 0 or 1 hr. This potentiation was eliminated by nonreinforced presentations of the alternative CS element. Potentiation was not seen when the two flavors were presented successively as the CS; instead, overshadowing occurred. Tests of configuring by extinction procedures indicated a tendency for these animals to form a configured representation of the simultaneous compound solution. This disposition for configuring tended to be more pronounced for preweanlings than for adults. Ontogenetic differences in response to configuration, CS saliency, and generalization decrement seem consistent with at least one model of potentiation and the ontogenetic differences in potentiation seen in the present experiments.