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STIMULUS ASPECTS OF AVERSIVE CONTROLS: THE EFFECTS OF RESPONSE CONTINGENT SHOCK 1
Author(s) -
Hoffman Howard S.,
Fleshler Morton
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.1965.8-89
Subject(s) - peck (imperial) , pecking order , stimulus (psychology) , shock (circulatory) , psychology , tone (literature) , aversive stimulus , audiology , stimulus control , neuroscience , developmental psychology , social psychology , cognitive psychology , mathematics , biology , ecology , medicine , art , geometry , literature , nicotine
A tone ending with electrical shock was periodically presented to pigeons while they pecked a key for food. Pairs of birds were run simultaneously under a yoked program which insured that both birds received the same number and temporal distribution of shocks. For one of the birds, shock was always initiated by a peck; for the other, shock was unavoidable. Both procedures led to reduced rates of pecking in the presence of the tone, and gradients of stimulus generalization were obtained. But the effects of response contingent shock extinguished more rapidly than the effects of unavoidable shock. In general, birds exposed to unavoidable shock tended to respond at intermediate rates throughout tone, whereas those exposed to response contingent shock ceased to peck for part or all of the tone period.