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TIMING OF AVOIDANCE RESPONSES BY RATS 1
Author(s) -
Libby Myrna E.,
Church Russell M.
Publication year - 1974
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.1974.22-513
Subject(s) - avoidance response , interval (graph theory) , shock (circulatory) , response time , functional response , audiology , avoidance learning , statistics , psychology , mathematics , medicine , computer science , neuroscience , biology , combinatorics , paleontology , computer graphics (images) , predator , predation
Three rats were trained on an unsignalled shuttlebox‐avoidance task under three response‐shock intervals (10, 20, and 40 sec). Under all conditions, subjects developed excellent temporal gradients of avoidance; that is, response rate was an increasing function of time since last response. Although the response rate at any given interval of time after the previous response was inversely related to the response‐shock interval, there was an underlying similarity in the temporal gradients for the three intervals. In all cases, response rate relative to the maximum response rate was approximately equal to the proportion of the interval that had elapsed. This suggests that rats in unsignalled avoidance are estimating time from response completion, and that the units of the estimate are proportional parts of the response‐shock interval.