Motivation in learning. VIII. Equivalent amounts of electric shock for right and wrong responses in a visual discrimination habit.

Abstract

The first study of this series demonstrated that when shock is given for correct responses learning is accelerated as if it were given for wrong responses. It was concluded that the function of shock after the point of choice is "to make the animal respond more readily to the significant cues in the learning situation." (l,p.276) In this first experiment a rat of the shock-wrong group received about one-fifth of the amount of shock received by a rat in the shock-right group. And yet, the acceleration produced by shock for wrong responses was slightly in excess of that produced by shock for right responses. At that time we commented that "only further analysis can reveal whether or not this difference has any meaning." (1, p. 273) In view of these relations Professor H. A. Carr, in a personal communication to the senior author, 1 suggested that there might be two alternative explanations for shock-right effect. To quote Professor Carr:(a) "Shock exerts its effect upon the total reaction of the animal and the kind and degree of effect does not vary with the location at which the shock is given." This was essentially the position taken by us, except that we should add the restriction that such a statement referred only to shock after the point of 1 We are greatly indebted to Professor H. A. Carr for his critical comments on the experiments in this series and especially for his suggestions which led to the present experiment.

Concerning the effect of shock for right responses in visual discrimination learning.

“…The point to be emphasized is that in terms of all measurestrials, errors, reinforcements-the differences between our shock-right group and no-shock group are not statistically significant although the differences between each of these groups on the one hand and the shock-wrong group on the other are statistically significant. These results are to be contrasted with those reported by Muenzinger et al (2) which show a significant difference between the shock-right and no-shock groups in favor of the former.…”

The Effects of Punishment on Avoidance Behavior

“…Similar paradoxical findings were also revealed in a series of discrimination learning experiments with white rats by Muenzinger and his students (21,23). In their experiments" it appeared that punishment tended to fixate responses instead of inhibiting them " (17, p.424)***.…”

Discrimination performance as affected by duration of shock for either the correct or incorrect response

“…The paradoxical finding reported by Muenzinger and his colleagues (e. g., Muenzinger, 1934;Muenzinger et al, 1938) that shock for the correct response facilitates discrimination performance appears generally accepted despite the results of more recent investigations which have failed to demonstrate the effect and point up the import of considering various classes of determining variables, including training procedures and shock parameters. In one of these studies (Wischner et al, 1963), investigation of the effect of shock intensity showed that, with a non-correction procedure, increasing intensities of shock reduced errors for shock-wrong (SW) groups but increased them for shock-right (SR) groups, all of the latter being inferior to no-shock (NS) controls.…”