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FIXED‐RATIO PUNISHMENT WITH CONTINUOUS REINFORCEMENT
Author(s) -
Hendry Derek P.,
VanToller C.
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.1964.7-293
Subject(s) - punishment (psychology) , reinforcement , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , social psychology , audiology , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , medicine
Rats were reinforced with water for every bar‐press and concurrently punished for every 10th or 20th bar‐press. Punishment produced an initial suppression of responding followed by recovery. A slight change in the method of delivering punishment eventually led to a high response rate just after punishment, a low response rate just before punishment, and frequent intermediate pauses. The results are interpreted as showing that punishment became a safe signal and that the high rate of responding it released came to act as a conditioned aversive stimulus. The effects of amphetamine were consistent with this interpretation. Alcohol had the paradoxical effect of increasing pauses and depressing the low rate before punishment.