Abstract
An experiment evaluated whether a stimulus associated with extinction can attenuate the reinstatement of a previously extinguished predictive learning relationship in humans. Participants learned a specific relationship between two cues (X and Y) and two outcomes (O1 and O2) during the first phase. Throughout extinction, both cues were presented without outcomes. Then, testing was conducted after exposure to the original outcomes. We found a reduction of the reinstatement effect when participants received a cue associated with extinction, but not when testing involved a novel cue. This result indicates that the reductive effect depends on the cue’s specific association with extinction. The findings are consistent with the theoretical view that explains reinstatement as a failure to retrieve the extinction learning.