Elicitation theory: I. An analysis of two typical learning situations.

Denny, M. Ray; Adelman, Harvey M.

doi:10.1037/h0046265

Cited by 60 publications

(41 citation statements)

References 19 publications

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Actually, given the conditions of Experiment 1, neither the occurrence of learning in E -10 during early extinction trials nor the failure to extinguish is incompatible with theories of Guthrie (1953) or Denny and Adelman (1955). SUMMARY In Experiment I two groups of rats, E -10 and E -50, were trained to press a bar one trial a day for 10 and 50 trials, respectively, and were then given 75 extinction trials, one per day.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

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One Bar‐press Per Day: Acquisition and Extinction

Denny

1959

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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Ordinarily, when a learned response is no longer followed by reward, the probability of the occurrence of this response is diminished and ultimately the response is extinguished. The present study explores the possibility of preventing the extinction of a bar-pressing response under one-trial-a-day acquisition and one-trial-aday extinction when the bar is always removed immediately after it has been pressed.EXPERIMENT I SubjectsThe Ss were 16 naive female hooded rats, 80-90 days old at the beginning of the experiment, from the colony of the Psychology Department of Michigan State University. The animals served as Ss for extended periods, in one case as long as 6 months. Apparatus A very simple b-ar-pressing apparatus was used. The box was a plywood 10-inch cube with a 5-by-7-inch glass window on the side opposide the bar. The top was covered with hardware cloth through which the rat was observed. The cylindrically shaped bar was 6 millimeters in diameter, located midway in one wall 2 inches above the floor. The bar extended 2 1/2 inches into the box and a 10-gram pressure was required to depress it. A metal food tray was located on the floor 1 inch to the right of the bar. Following an excursion of 1/4 inch or more of the bar, as determined by the release of a pendulum on the outside of the box, a pellet of food (approximately 0.05 gram) was dropped manually through a short metal tube into the food tray. The bar could be immediately retracted by a simple manual movement. Preliminary training Five days of handling and being on a reduced diet were followed by six days of preliminary training. Once a day during this period each S was placed, two at a time, in a box with the bar removed. The food tray contained 20 pellets and each pair of rats remained in the box until all the pellets were consumed. The pairings differed randomly from day to day. Throughout this period and the remainder of the experiment the Ss were fed 9 grams of food 5-10 minutes after being removed from the box. A variety of experimentation in our laboratory indicates that this interval is sufficiently long to prevent incidental reinforcement of a prior response. TrainingThere were two main groups of subjects, the control (N = 6) and the experimental (N = 10). Two additional animals were discarded, one from each main group, because they failed to press the bar within 5 minutes on five successive days. The experimental -Ss were divided into two sub-groups, E -10 (N = 5) and 81

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 89%

One Bar‐press Per Day: Acquisition and Extinction

Denny

1959

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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“…It is not yet clear whether the delay of reinforcement that accompanies postprompt responding is responsible for transfer or whether the shift in control is provoked by a pairing of prompt and task stimuli, which approximates the Pavlovian paradigm (Denny & Adelman, 1955;Johnson, 1981). If contrast in reinforcement density provokes transfer, the rate of transfer should be sensitive to manipulations of contingencies that alter reinforcement density.…”

Section: Simultaneous Responsesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Errorless Learning: Reinforcement Contingencies and Stimulus Control Transfer in Delayed Prompting

Touchette

Howard

1984

J of App Behav Analysis

161

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Delayed prompting can produce errorless discrimination learning. There is inherent in the procedure a disparity in reinforcement density which favors unprompted over prompted responses. We used three schedules of reinforcement to investigate the impact of reinforcement probability on transfer of stimulus control. One schedule of reinforcement was equal prior to and following a prompt (CRF/CRF), the second favored unprompted responses (CRF/FR3), and the third favored responses following the prompt (FR3/CRF). Experimental questions concerned the probability of errors, the probability of transfer, and the rate of transfer in the context of delayed prompting. Transfer was accelerated when reinforcement probability favored anticipatory responding. The schedule that favored prompted responses did not prevent a shift to unprompted responding. Errors were infrequent across procedures. Reinforcement probability contributes to but does not entirely determine transfer of stimulus control from a delayed prompt.

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“…Acquisition (Reynierse, Weisman, & Denny, 1963;Denny & Weisman, 1964;Weisman, Denny, & Zerbolio, 1967;Zerbolio, 1968) and extinction (Denny & Weisman, 1964;Weisman, Denny, Platt, & Zerbolio, 1966) were facilitated by long confmement in the discriminable safe compartment of what are essentially one-way avoidance tasks. Analyses of these effects in terms of elicitation theory (Denny & Adelman, 1955;Denny, 1967) emphasizes that long nonshock confmement permits conditioning of relaxation to stimuli in the nonshock area. In addition to mediating the acquisition of avoidance, the chaining or generalization of relaxation to the shock area presumably provides competing responses mediating extinction of avoidance.…”

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confidence: 99%