Effect of strength of punishment for "correct" or "incorrect" responses on visual discrimination performance.

Abstract

The purpose was to investigate the effect of variation in shock intensity on the acquisition of a black-white discrimination by 56 white rats in a situation involving shock for the correct or incorrect response, a noncorrection procedure, and 2 different training methods (free-vs. forcedchoice). Differences in outcome between training methods were negligible. Shock intensity functions showed that errors increased with increasing intensities for shock-right groups, decreased with increasing intensities for shock-wrong groups. All shock-right groups were inferior to no-shock controls, a finding in opposition to the generalization that shock for the correct response facilitates performance.

Effects of Response Cost in Computerized Programmed Instruction

“…Punishment of incorrect responses plus reinforcement of correct responses produces lower error rates than does reinforcement alone (Boe & Church, 1968;Hemry, 1973;Trent, 1983;Warden & Aylesworth, 1927;Wischner, Fowler, & Kushnick, 1963;Witte & Grossman, 1971) or punishment alone (Brackbill & O'Hara, 1958;Wright & Smothergill, 1967). Those outcomes are replicable despite the species, and despite varying degrees of intellectual capability (Foxx, 1984;Harris & Tramontana, 1973).…”

Facilitating stimulus effects of reward and punishment in discrimination learning

“…Consistent with this interpretation, the "shock-right" facilitation effect is typically absent in an easy discrimination in which the discriminative stimuli (e.g., light-dark) are highly dissimilar and hence preclude a distinctive-cue function of the shock (e.g., Wischner & Fowler, 1964;Wischner, Fowler, & Kushnick, 1963); in contrast, the facilitation effect is consistently observed in more difficult (e.g., bright-dim) discriminations in which the discriminative stimuli are similar and thus potentiate the shock's cue function (e.g., Fowler, Spelt, & Wischner, 1967;Fowler & Wischner, 1965). Furthermore, if the aversiveness of the shock is reduced through the administration of sodium amytal (Fowler, Goldman, & Wischner, 1968), the facilitation occurring in a difficult discrimination is, within limits, an increasing S-shaped function of shock intensity, consistent with the Weber principle relating performance to the discriminable cue properties (e.g., the intensity) of a stimulus.…”

Perdas E Ganhos: Efeitos De Consequências Programadas Sobre O Seguimento De Regras

“…Alguns desses estudos descreveram condições no treino com punição que poderiam ser essenciais para que esse efeito facilitador fosse observado; duas particularmente parecem ser de especial interesse para futuras investigações: (1) a complexidade dos estímulos discriminativos e (2) a intensidade do estímulo aversivo. A literatura tem demonstrado que quanto mais proeminentes as dimensões do estímulo a serem discriminadas e quanto menor o número de dimensões irrelevantes a serem ignoradas, mais rapidamente se daria a aquisição, particularmente quando as consequências são mantidas por reforço negativo (Meyer & Offenbach, 1962;Wischner, Fowler, & Kushnick, 1963;Yerkes & Dodson, 1908). Esse aspecto nos parece interessante particularmente quando observamos que, no presente trabalho, um número relativamente menor de participantes reverteu o responder nos blocos discrepantes, quando comparados com os resultados de estudos similares (Albuquerque et al, 2004;Paracampo et al, 2007;Pinto et al, 2008).…”