Concurrent development of excitatory and inhibitory associations during backward conditioning

After backward pairings with a paraorbital shock, a tone CS was an effective punisher of licking in rabbits, yet yielded retarded forward acquisition of the rabbit’s nictitating membrane response. The observation of both excitatory and inhibitory associative effects after a common training protocol challenges the assumption of a unidimensional associative continuum and supports approaches that assert a multidimensional structure to associations.