Effect of pairing a stimulus with presentations of the UCS on the extinction of an avoidance response in humans.

Abstract

Experimentation was carried out to study the effect of pairing a stimulus (PS) with UCS presentations, on the rate of extinction of an avoidance response in humans. It was found that extinction was facilitated by any manipulations of the PS which produced a difference between the acquisition and extinction situations. The greater the difference the more rapid was the extinction. The effect of the PS was interpreted through the generalization-decrement hypothesis and it was suggested that the effect of the PS would be replicable when the stimulus was not paired with presentations of the UCS.

Effects of serial CS presentation on a finger-withdrawal avoidance response to shock.

“…However, the extension of this conditioning hypothesis to the human level is not without limitations because of the added problem with humans of "voluntary" responding and self-instructional sets. Nevertheless, the finger-withdrawal paradigm employed has resulted in data which are quite consistent with fear models offered at the infrahuman level (Banks, 1965;Elias, 1965;Goerk & Kamin, 1959;Wickens & Platt, 1954).…”

Interbehavioral Analysis of Adult Children of Alcoholics

“…as well as their applied counterparts (e.g., Eysenck, 1979;Stampfl & Levis, 1967;Wolpe, 1958) have proposed that psychological symptoms can be conceptualized as avoidance behaviors designed to escape from .avershe conditioned stimuli. Human laboratory experiments attesting to this phenomenon (Banks, 1965;Malloy & Levis, 1988;Matson & DiLorenzo, 1984;Maxwell, Miller & Meyer, 1971) repeatedly show that persistence of avoidance and escape patterns even in the absence of danger, relates to a history of conditioning and intermittent contact with fearful stimuli. mo era ti on all^ avoidance and escape refer to responseproducing changes that terminate that aversive event.…”

Effect of type of aversive event and warning signal duration on human avoidance performance

“…In free-operant studies, the periodic withdrawal of positive reinforcing stimuli such as coins (e.g., Baron & Kaufman, 1966), point loss (e.g., Weiner, 1963), and cartoons (e.g., Baer, 1960) , as well as the presentation of noxious stimuli such as electric shock (e.g., Ader & Tatum , 1961) and white noise (e.g., Presbie, 1970) have been used. In discrete-trial avoidance experiments, electric shock (e.g., Banks, 1965), loud tones (e.g., Penny & Croskery, 1962), and air blasts (e.g., Miller, Kalin, Eckenroth, & Meyer, 1970) have been the most commonly used noxious stimuli . In addition, withdrawal of positive reinforcing stimuli such as children's stories (Moffat, 1972) and entertaining material (e.g., Moffat & Miller, 1970) have been employed effectively as aversive stimuli in discrete-trial avoidance conditioning experiments.…”