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POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT AND SUPPRESSION FROM THE SAME OCCURRENCE OF THE UNCONDITIONED STIMULUS IN A POSITIVE CONDITIONED SUPPRESSION PROCEDURE 1
Author(s) -
Hake D. F.,
Powell J.
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.1970.14-247
Subject(s) - reinforcement , psychology , stimulation , stimulus (psychology) , brain stimulation , neuroscience , schedule , electrical brain stimulation , unconditioned stimulus , audiology , neutral stimulus , developmental psychology , stimulus control , conditioning , classical conditioning , cognitive psychology , social psychology , mathematics , statistics , medicine , computer science , nicotine , operating system
Responding of rats was maintained on a variable‐interval schedule of food reinforcement. The same response also produced a blinking light followed by electrical brain stimulation according to a fixed‐interval schedule. This conjoint schedule produced two behavioral changes. First, instead of a steady rate of responding throughout the session, which would be characteristic of the variable interval food schedule alone, responding between occurrences of the light‐brain stimulation pairings became positively accelerated and thus was more characteristic of the fixed‐interval schedule of these pairings. Second, food responding was suppressed during the light that preceded brain stimulation. These results indicate that positive reinforcement and suppression resulted from the same occurrence of the light‐brain stimulation combination. This finding suggests that stimuli such as conditioned reinforcers that precede an unconditioned reinforcer may have a suppressive effect upon responding in their presence that is being maintained by another reinforcer.