Transfer of occasion setting across stimulus and response in operant feature positive discriminations

Two experiments examined transfer of stimulus control after discrete-trial operant serial feature positive discrimination (X → A+ A-) training in rats. Transfer of the X feature's ability to facilitate responding to a subsequent target cue was nearly complete if the transfer target had been trained as the target in another serial feature positive discrimination, even if that target controlled a different operant than controlled by the original A target. Repeated presentations of X alone had little effect on performance to either the original or transfer test compounds. In contrast, transfer to a separately trained and extinguished target was smaller and occurred only if the original and transfer target controlled the same operant. Furthermore that transfer was eliminated by nonreinforced feature presentations. Implications of these data for hypotheses about the nature of occasion setting in operant conditioning were discussed.