Between about 1920 and 1970 a good proportion of psychology involved studying how animals learn associations – conditioning. A lot of this stuff is still true (for what it is) and relevant, but has never made it into electronic archives. If i ever want to know something about _any_ detail of classical or operant conditioning, no matter how small, i assume it must have been done by someone. Fundamentally the hypothetical result i’m thinking of will be out there already, i just need to find out where.
There’s a very senior professor in my department. I go and ask him. If he doesn’t know, he refers me to this book:
Mackintosh, N.J. (1974). The Psychology of Animal Learning. Academic Press.