Premium
CHOICE FOR SIGNALED OVER UNSIGNALED SHOCK AS A FUNCTION OF SIGNAL LENGTH
Author(s) -
Abbott Bruce,
Badia Pietro
Publication year - 1979
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.1979.32-409
Subject(s) - shock (circulatory) , signal (programming language) , function (biology) , psychology , computer science , medicine , biology , programming language , evolutionary biology
Subjects chose between signaled and unsignaled shock conditions while signal length was varied between .5 and 2.0 seconds in steps of .5 seconds in both ascending and descending series. Preference for the signaled condition failed to develop initially for five of six subjects when signals were .5 or 1.0 seconds but became strong for all subjects when signals were 2.0 seconds (ascending series). Preference declined when signals were shortened, but for most subjects this decline was small (descending series). Since discriminable shock‐free periods were present in the signaled condition at all signal lengths, these results suggest that safety may not be a sufficient condition for preference to develop for signaled shock.