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DRIVE STRENGTH AND ADAPTATION TO STRESS
Author(s) -
HURWITZ H. M. B.,
ROWELL J.
Publication year - 1958
Publication title -
british journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.536
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8295
pISSN - 0007-1269
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8295.1958.tb00673.x
Subject(s) - psychology , adaptation (eye) , stress (linguistics) , discrimination learning , audiology , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , neuroscience , medicine , linguistics , philosophy
Support for the hypothesis that adaptive responses reduce the drive component in behaviour was found in an experiment involving two groups of rats placed, for different periods, in a water tank. After being detained in a delay chamber, the rats were allowed to escape after making a brightness discrimination. A discrimination reversal test was undertaken in order to establish whether the original learning had been affected by the length of the water‐detention period. It was found that a long prediscrimination detention period facilitated reversal learning. This result was taken to support the major contention of the paper, that prolonged exposure to a potential stress situation encouraged the elaboration of drive‐minimizing responses and, in consequence, favoured discrimination learning.