Question

Describe Garcia's experiments that showed that taste aversions can be acquired with long CS‑US intervals. Do these findings show that the contiguity principle does not apply to taste aversion learning?

Answer 1

Garcia and Koelling's experiments showed that taste aversions can be acquired with long intervals between the conditioned stimulus (CS) and the unconditioned stimulus (US). These findings challenge the contiguity principle in taste aversion learning.

Step-by-step explanation:

Garcia and Koelling (1966) conducted experiments that showed that taste aversions can be acquired with long CS‑US intervals. In their study, separate groups of rats were conditioned to associate either a flavor with illness or lights and sounds with illness.

All rats exposed to flavor-illness pairings learned to avoid the flavor, but none of the rats exposed to lights and sounds with illness learned to avoid lights or sounds. These findings suggest that the contiguity principle, which states that the CS and the US should be presented close together in time, does not apply to taste aversion learning.