Interaction of Pavlovian conditioning with a zero operant contingency: chronic exposure to signaled inescapable shock maintains learned helplessness effects.

In four experiments we used triads, consisting of escapable-shock (ES), yoked inescapable-shock (IS), and no-shock (NS) rats, to investigate the effect of the interaction between Pavlovian contingencies and a zero operant contingency (i.e., uncontrollability) upon subsequent shock-escape acquisition in the shuttle box. After exposure to 50 signals and shocks per session for nine sessions, interference with shuttle box escape acquisition for IS rats was a monotonically increasing function of the percentage of signal-shock pairings during training (Experiment 1), with 50% pairings producing little or no impairment. Without regard to signaling, ES rats performed as well as NS rats. Experiment 2 demonstrated that our training and test conditions led to substantial and equal impairment in IS rats preexposed for one session to 100% or 50% signal-shock pairings or to unsignaled shocks. In Experiment 3, chronic exposure to 100% signaled inescapable shocks resulted in impairment only if the signal (light) was present during the shuttle box test. The continuous presence of the signal during the test contrasted with its discrete (5-s) presentation during training and suggested that an antagonistic physiological reaction rather than a specific competing motor response had been conditioned. Experiment 4 provided evidence for possible conditioned opioid mediation by demonstrating contemporaneous stress-induced analgesia and shock-escape impairment in IS rats chronically exposed to 100%, but not to 50%, signal-shock pairings, and the elimination of both analgesia and escape interference by the opiate antagonist naltrexone. Thus, chronic exposure to uncontrollable shocks appears to maintain the impairment produced by acute exposure only if the shocks are adequately signaled.