What is the differences between foreground contextual conditioning and background contextual conditioning?

Foreground contextual condtioning occurs when an emotionally salient event (such as a shock or some food) is presented in an environment (a context) with no discrete cues to predict it. In this case, the context is the most direct predictor of the salient event and conditioning to the context will be strong.

Background contextual conditioning occurs when the same emotionally salient event is presented in a context but each event is predicted by a discete cue (for example, a tone that comes on for 10 seconds before the shock is delivered). The context is always "on" or there (in the "background")and gives no timing about when the shock will happen. The tone only appears when the shock is about to be delivered. In this case there are still pairings of the context and the shock and some conditioning will accrue to the context, however this will be less than would occur if the cue was not present. In this case, the tone cue is in the "foreground" and the rat will learn that the tone predicts the shock, and this learning will "block" learning about the context since the tone is a better predictor of the shock.

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