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GENERALIZATION GRADIENTS OF INHIBITION AFTER DIFFERENT AMOUNTS OF TRAINING 1
Author(s) -
Farthing G. William,
Hearst Eliot
Publication year - 1968
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.1968.11-743
Subject(s) - reinforcement , stimulus generalization , psychology , pecking order , blank , discrimination learning , stimulus (psychology) , generalization , stimulus control , audiology , cognitive psychology , developmental psychology , social psychology , mathematics , neuroscience , medicine , biology , mathematical analysis , mechanical engineering , evolutionary biology , engineering , perception , nicotine
Five groups of pigeons received seven sessions of variable‐interval reinforcement for pecking a blank white key, followed by either 1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 sessions of training on a successive discrimination in which the positive stimulus was the blank white key and the negative stimulus was a black vertical line on the white key. After training, a generalization test was administered along the line‐tilt continuum. Relative gradients of inhibition became steeper with increased amounts of training, and reliably nonhorizontal absolute gradients were obtained only from groups of subjects with at least four days of training. Therefore, inhibitory stimulus control improves with added training. Several problems with the concept of “inhibition” are examined and some implications of the results for theoretical analyses of operant discrimination learning are discussed.