No abstract

The simplest interpretation of current avoidance learning theories (Solomon & Brush, 1956) might lead one to believe that successful avoidance responding almost inevitably develops if a discriminable cue consistently precedes painful stimulation that motivates vigorous escape responding, and if anticipatory performance of that response can avoid the painful stimulation. As the following study will show, such is hardly the case. Several variables which demand a more adequate theoretical formulation appear to have a great effect on the success or failure of simple avoidance training. No doubt many experimenters have, after trial and error, concentrated on particular conditions which reliably produce learning, avoiding the exceptions both empirically and theoretically. As Solomon and Brush (1956) maintain, "Failures of .Ss to learn to avoid are not rare, but they are less apt to be reported in scientific papers than are the successes" (p. 215).The present experiment grew out of pilot studies in which rats unexpectedly failed to learn shock-avoidance responses in seemingly conventional Skinner-box training situations. Five variables which seemed most relevant to success and failure were investigated. These were: (a) The type of conditioned stimulus. A buzzer and a 4,000-cycle sine-wave tone were chosen as two stimuli that gave markedly different results in pilot studies, (b) The type of response. Two different responses were chosen: pressing a bar and rotating a drumtype wheel, (c) The method of applying shock. In one condition, the wheel or bar was electrified along with the grid floor and walls when S was shocked for failure to make an avoidance

No abstract

Subjects adjusted the rate of a repeating toneburst to match that of a concurrently flashing light, or vice versa. Flashes were viewed in luminous or wholly dark surrounds. Matches usually departed from veridical rate matches, and always were affected in the same direction by changes in surround luminance. Matches were a function of whether subjects controlled the visual or auditory stimulus; also, subjects usually reported "driving" of flash rates by auditory rates when they controlled tone rate, but not when they controlled flash rate.When an observer views a repeatedly flashing light and simultaneously hears a repeated clicking sound at repetition rates around 4-10 Hz, the apparent rates of the auditory and visual stimuli may appear markedly different from each other, even when the flash and click rates are identical and are produced in synchrony by means of a single pulse-train generator. While making informal observations of this effect, the authors noted that the apparent rate of the flashes instantaneously increased when the room in which they were viewed was darkened, and decreased again when lights were restored. These effects were duplicated in pilot studies in which subjects matched the rate of a flashing light by adjusting the rate of an independently variable clicking sound.There are a number of studies in the literature that deal with the apparent rate or frequency of repetitive visual and/or auditory stimuli (Forsyth

No abstract