Amphetamine increases aversive conditioning to diffuse contextual stimuli and to a discrete trace stimulus when conditioned at higher footshock intensity

Amphetamine can increase conditioning to poor predictors of reinforcement in selective learning tasks (e.g. latent inhibition, LI). In the present study, a noise stimulus was contiguous with footshock or presented at a trace interval. A flashing light background stimulus was used to measure contextual conditioning. Experiment 1 used 1.5 mg/kg and 6 mg/kg dl-amphetamine. Experiments 2 and 3 used 0.5 mg/kg and 1.5 mg/kg d-amphetamine. Unconditioned stimuli parameters (intensity, number, duration) were also manipulated from one experiment to the next. Amphetamine consistently increased conditioning to the background stimulus, and increased conditioning to the trace stimulus at higher footshock intensity (Experiment 3). Thus, amphetamine increased conditioning only to relatively uninformative predictors. The effect on conditioning to trace conditioned stimuli depended on the level of reinforcer but increased conditioning to background did not. Throughout, there was no effect of amphetamine on conditioning of the contiguous stimulus. Thus, the results did not simply arise because amphetamine increased conditioning under any condition in which conditioning without amphetamine was poor. The results are discussed in terms of amphetamine effects on breadth of attention and LI to context.