Previously, Holland et al. (Hipp, 9: 143-157, 2000) reported that acquisition of an appetitive serial feature negative (FN) discrimination (A+, B-->A-) was impaired for rats with excitotoxic lesions of the hippocampus. However, other experiments failed to replicate this finding (e.g., Morell, et al., SFN Abst, 2000). In the study by Holland et al., a relatively high level of responding was observed to the target from the outset of training. In the present experiment, we used pretraining (A+) to elevate responding to the target, prior to FN training. We then assessed the effects of pretraining on the ability of rats with ibotenate hippocampal lesions to solve the FN discrimination. Following pretraining with the target, rats with hippocampal lesions showed superior FN performance relative to controls. This enhancement was reduced for hippocampal rats that had been pretrained with a target different than the target used during FN training. The results of a summation test suggested that for both lesioned rats...