Associative changes in excitors and inhibitors differ when they are conditioned in compound.

When an AB stimulus compound is reinforced or nonreinforced, there are associative changes in both A and B elements. In many contemporary theories those changes are viewed as governed by a common error term, computed as the discrepancy between the total associative strength of the AB compound and that supported by the trial consequence. This implies that if A and B are equally salient, then the magnitude of their associative change should be the same, whatever their strengths prior to the AB trial. This implication was explored for a compound consisting of an excitatory A and an inhibitory B. A novel assessment procedure avoided the difficulty of making comparisons at different locations on the performance scale. Three experiments using a magazine approach preparation in rats and 3 using autoshaping in pigeons found evidence contradicting this implication. The excitatory A changed less than the inhibitory B when the compound was reinforced but more than B when the compound was nonreinforced.