These experiments explored whether exposure to inescapable shock produces a subsequent deficit in the organism's propensity to associate its behavior with shock termination. Previous experiments are incapable of resolving this question because they confound reduced associability and decreased activity. Four experiments examined the effects of inescapable shock on the acquisition of Y-maze escape. Here, escape is accomplished by choosing the correct response from two available alternatives rather than by simple locomotion as in a shuttle box. By itself, reduced activity should not produce inaccurate choices, only slow choices. Experiment 1 found that inescapable shock produced slow learning of the correct choice for escape, even though active choices occurred on every trial. Further, the speed and accuracy of choice were not correlated. The second experiment showed that the choice escape learning deficit was produced by the inescapability of the shocks. Experiment 3 demonstrated that the choice accuracy of inescapably shocked rats was not improved by increases in Y-maze shock intensity, even though speed of responding was increased. The final experiment revealed that the effects of inescapable shock on Y-maze acquisition did not dissipate across a 1-wk period.
Current windowing systems (i.e., Macintosh, Smalltalk) give the user flexibility in the layout of their computer display, but tend to discourage construction of new window types. Glazier is a knowledge-based tool that allows users to construct and test novel or special purpose windows for Smalltalk applications.The use of Glazier does not require understanding Smalltalk's windowing framework (Goldberg, 1984;Goldberg & Robson, 1983). As a new window is specified, Glazier automatically constructs the necessary Smalltalk ciass, and methods (programs). Windows are interactively specified in a Glazier window -the user specifies type and location of panes through mouse motions. Panes can contain text, bit-maps, lists, dials, gauges, or tables. The behavior of a pane is initially determined by Glazier as a function of the pane type and related defaults. These default behaviors allow the window to operate, but do not always display the application information desired. In that case, the user can fix the window's behavior by further specification. Such alterations require only knowledge of the application, not of the windowing system. Glazier allows the prototyping and development of fullfledged Smalltalk windows, and allows a flexibility that will change window usage in two ways. First, it will allow end users to construct special purpose windows for viewing data from an application in manners unanticipated by the system designers. Second, system developers will be encouraged to prototype and evaluate many window configurations before settling on a final choice. Both alternatives will result in windows that are more satisfying to the end-user.
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