Extinction Contexts Fail to Transfer Control: Implications for Conditioned Inhibition and Occasion-Setting Accounts of Renewal

The renewal effect is often explained as a side effect of the extinction context acting as a negative occasion setter. Four experiments tested whether extinction contexts show the selective-transfer property of occasion setters. Experiments 1-3 used a predictive judgment task where participants rated the probability of certain foods (cues) producing gastric malaise (outcomes) in different restaurants (contexts). Experiment 4 used a behavioral suppression task where sensor lights (cues) served as signals to suppress firing responses in certain galaxies (contexts). All 4 (Experiments 1-4) addressed whether a potentially negative occasion-setting context transferred its modulatory power to an extinguished (presumably occasion set) target in the test phase of an ABC renewal design. Experiments 2-4 further assessed the possibility that the extinction context acts as a conditioned inhibitor by testing a simple excitor on a context where extinction occurred. Neither selective (occasion-setting) nor nonselective transfer (conditioned inhibition) was demonstrated. Implications for theories of renewal and occasionsetting are discussed.