Female rats trained to traverse a runway to escape bright light while thirsty ran faster than ones trained while water-satiated. Taken together with the results of a number of other studies, this observation supports the generalization that hunger or thirst depresses performance on manipulandum escape or avoidance and facilitates performance when locomotion is required for escape or avoidance. We suggest that species-specific defensive reactions elicited by the aversive stimulus interact with the required escape or avoidance response and with food-or water-seeking behavior elicited by deprivation to determine the effect of deprivation on escape or avoidance.Hull's (1943) ideas about irrelevant drive and drive summation provided the impetus for studying the effects of combining different sources of motivation. After reviewing the often contradictory results of such studies, Bolles (1967) concluded, somewhat in jest, that irrelevant drives inhibit responding unless they happen to facilitate it. Interest in this area of research has subsequently declined. Yet the notion of combined sources of motivation continues to be used in the explanation of phenomena as diverse as social facilitation (Zajonc, 1965), aggression (Berkowitz, 1974), interpersonal attraction (Dutton & Aaron, 1974), and partial reinforcement effects (Amsel, 1958).In reviewing the effect of hunger or thirst on aversively motivated behaviors, Moriarty, Dachowski, and Patterson (1978) found several studies showing that hunger and thirst depress performance on manipulandum escape or avoidance tasks (e.g., Dachowski, 1964;Davidson, 1971;Griffin, Medearis, & Hughes, 1973;Leander, 1973;Meyer, Adams, & Worthen, 1969) and facilitate performance on locomotor escape or avoidance tasks (e.g., Amsel, 1950;Braun, Wedekind, & Smudski, 1957;Franchina, 1966;Jerome, Moody, Connor, & Fernandez, 1957). Moriarty et al . (1978) reported the results of a study in which thirst depressed performance when rats were required to press a bar to escape bright light. Taken together, these studies indicate a general pattern of the facilitation of locomotor escape and avoidance by hunger or thirst, and the depression of manipulandum escape or avoidance by hunger or thirst. What is lacking in this literature is the demonstration that a given combination This research was supported in part by a grant from the University of San Diego Associated Students to the second author. Requests for reprints should be sent to Daniel D. Moriarty, Jr., Department of Psychology, University of San Diego, San Diego, CA 92110. of deprivation and aversive stimulation that depresses performance on a manipulandum task also facilitates performance of a locomotor response. The present study was designed to provide that demonstration by examining the effect of thirst, which has been shown to depress manipulandum light escape, on a locomotor light escape task. MEmOD SubjectsThe subjects were 28 naive female albino rats purchased from Simonsen Labs, Inc., Gilroy, California, and were approximately 90 days old ...
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