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STRESS‐INDUCED BREAKDOWN OF AN APPETITIVE DISCRIMINATION 1
Author(s) -
Hearst Eliot
Publication year - 1965
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.1965.8-135
Subject(s) - reinforcement , discriminative model , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , stimulus control , arousal , shock (circulatory) , audiology , stimulation , unconditioned stimulus , neuroscience , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , conditioning , social psychology , medicine , classical conditioning , artificial intelligence , computer science , nicotine , statistics , mathematics
Rats trained to discriminate between S D and SΔ for food reinforcement showed marked impairments in this discrimination when strong, unavoidable shocks occurred at the termination of a third stimulus. The predominant feature of this impairment was a supernormal rate of unreinforced (SΔ) behavior. Shocks delivered without exteroceptive warning also led to a discriminative breakdown. The effect was a direct function of shock intensity. When behavior was strongly suppressed in the third stimulus by response‐correlated shock (“punishment”), instead of unavoidable shock, breakdowns were only temporary; as soon as responding recovered from its overall suppression, discriminative performance returned to normal. The discriminative deterioration may be interpreted as an emotional by‐product of frequent aversive stimulation, but accidental contingencies could also have played a role.