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STIMULUS CONTROL OF AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR 1
Author(s) -
Ulrich Roger E.,
Holz William C.,
Azrin Nathan H.
Publication year - 1964
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.1964.7-129
Subject(s) - stimulus (psychology) , audiology , psychology , duration (music) , shock (circulatory) , interval (graph theory) , avoidance response , neuroscience , medicine , mathematics , cognitive psychology , physics , acoustics , combinatorics
The introduction of a warning signal preceding shocks greatly increased the effectiveness of avoidance responding. Periods of “warm‐up” at the beginning of the session were eliminated, and the number of shocks received by the subjects was greatly reduced. With response‐shock interval constant, response rate increased as the interval between the response and the onset of the warning signal was shortened. The response tended to occur shortly after the onset of the warning signal regardless of the duration of these “safe” periods. A greatly elevated response rate was maintained even when the duration of the safe period was reduced to 0.3 sec. Thus, the pre‐shock signal obtained nearly exclusive control of the responding and overrode the usual “temporal discrimination” of the response‐shock interval.