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OPERANT REINFORCEMENT OF AN AUTONOMIC RESPONSE: TWO STUDIES
Author(s) -
Gavalas Rochelle Johnson
Publication year - 1967
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.1967.10-119
Subject(s) - reinforcement , skin conductance , psychology , operant conditioning , heart rate , conditioning , audiology , developmental psychology , extinction (optical mineralogy) , basal (medicine) , medicine , social psychology , blood pressure , statistics , biology , paleontology , biomedical engineering , insulin , mathematics
Two successive studies were conducted to determine the possibility of operant reinforcement of nonspecific galvanic skin resistance responses. In the first study, with five experimental and three control subjects who served for 20 to 30 min a day for 10 days, all experimental subjects learned to emit more nonspecific galvanic skin resistance responses than their ad hoc matched controls. In a second study, nine experimental and nine control subjects were matched for first‐day levels of reactivity and yoked for operant reinforcement schedules. Significant differences between the two groups were found on the last day of conditioning and during extinction. Six of the nine experimental subjects showed higher cumulative rate curves than their matched and yoked controls. The concomitant measures (basal resistance, heart rate, etc .) all supported this finding. It was suggested that operant reinforcement of autonomic response tends to maintain a certain level of responding in contrast to persistent adaptation in the control group.