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CONDITIONED SUPPRESSION AND CONDITIONED ENHANCEMENT WITH THE SAME POSITIVE UCS: AN EFFECT OF CS DURATION
Author(s) -
Meltzer Donald,
Brahlek James A.
Publication year - 1970
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.1970.13-67
Subject(s) - stimulus (psychology) , neutral stimulus , reinforcement , classical conditioning , conditioning , psychology , measures of conditioned emotional response , stimulus control , lever , audiology , unconditioned stimulus , developmental psychology , neuroscience , medicine , physics , mathematics , social psychology , cognitive psychology , statistics , quantum mechanics , nicotine
Previous experiments have shown that positively reinforced operant responding is suppressed during a conditioned stimulus terminated with an electric shock (conditioned suppression). In the present experiment, the conditioned stimulus was terminated with a positive unconditioned stimulus, and it was found that the duration of the conditioned stimulus was a key factor in determining whether response suppression or response enhancement was observed during the stimulus. The lever‐pressing responses of rats were maintained by a variable‐interval schedule of food reinforcement. While the rats were pressing the lever, a light was occasionally turned on, its offset coincident with a brief period of access to a sucrose solution. In consecutive blocks of sessions, the light duration was 40 sec, 12 sec, or 120 sec. Results showed that the rate of lever pressing was substantially suppressed during the 12‐sec stimulus, slightly suppressed during the 40‐sec stimulus, and enhanced during the 120‐sec stimulus.