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REDUCTIONS IN SHOCK FREQUENCY AND RESPONSE EFFORT AS FACTORS IN REINFORCEMENT BY TIMEOUT FROM AVOIDANCE
Author(s) -
Courtney Karen,
Perone Michael
Publication year - 1992
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.1992.58-485
Subject(s) - timeout , reinforcement , lever , psychology , shock (circulatory) , schedule , extinction (optical mineralogy) , audiology , social psychology , computer science , medicine , engineering , biology , telecommunications , mechanical engineering , paleontology , operating system
Rats' presses on one lever canceled shocks programmed after variable cycles, while presses on a second lever occasionally produced a 2‐min timeout during which the shock‐deletion schedule was suspended and its correlated stimuli removed. These concurrent schedules of avoidance and timeout were embedded in a multiple schedule whose components differed, within and across conditions, in terms of the programmed shock rate associated with the shock‐deletion schedule. Analyses based on the generalized matching law suggest that the reduction in the response requirement correlated with termination of the avoidance schedule was a more important factor in the reinforcing effectiveness of timeout than was shock‐frequency reduction, at least in 2 of 3 rats. After training in each condition, responding on the timeout lever was extinguished by withholding timeouts in both components over seven sessions. Resistance to extinction varied directly with the rates of both shock‐frequency reduction and avoidance‐response reduction experienced during training. Although reduction in response effort appeared to dominate shock‐frequency reduction in the maintenance of responding, neither factor had a clear advantage in predicting the course of extinction.