Response fixation under anxiety and non-anxiety conditions.

Ie, Farber

doi:10.1037/h0055806

Cited by 97 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…In one of the previous papers, one of the present writers, in agreement with Farber (1948), emphasized fear-reduction as an important factor in the development of he wrote:" When responding in a particular way has been repeatedly followed by fear-reduction, it becomes firmly established as the habitual response to fear, and the more firmly it is established the weaker does the competing alternative response tendency become" (Imada & Shikano, 1968, p.144). If this fear-reduction hypothesis holds true, the avoidance behavior should become more variable by forcing S to respond in various directions equal number of times, thereby making the habit strength of responses occurred in each direction equal.…”

Section: Experiments Isupporting

confidence: 56%

Studies on Rigidity and Crystallization of Behavior

Niihama

1972

Jpn. Psychol. Res

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Section: Experiments Isupporting

confidence: 56%

Studies on Rigidity and Crystallization of Behavior

Niihama

1972

Jpn. Psychol. Res

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“…The number of Ss whose response speed was less than 10 sec. in the just preceding trial of extinction Table 3. criterion trials, which was conventionally taken here as a criterion of sudden extinction, are 3,6,6,8,8, from 118-to 340-P groups, respectively. This indicates that the number of S's showing sudden extinction increased with punishment intensity.…”

Section: Acquisitionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Punishment on Avoidance Behavior

IMADA

1959

Jpn. Psychol. Res

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“…Direct support for the idea that food contravenes fear has been provided by Wilson and Dinsmoor (1970) who found that fearmotivated passive avoidance was weakened by eating. Moreover, Farber (1948) has reported that eating reduces anxiety in rats, and the clinical literature abounds with suggestions that anxious individuals become obese because anxiety is mitigated by eating (Mowrer, 1960). But our alternative view, to be acceptable, must also be reconcilable with Meryman's significant positive findings.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 58%

Startle Potentiation and Heart Rate as Affected by Fear and Hunger

1985

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In a widely cited, unpublished study, abstracted at length herein, Meryman in 1952 reported that the acoustic startle response of the rat was potentiated by conditioned fear, by food deprivation, and summatively by both combined. Whereas others have verified the action of fear on startle, only scattered support has been obtained for the conclusion that startle can be potentiated by an appetitive variable. Because of the significance of this matter for general drive theory, further study is imperative. The present experiment, a replication and extension of Meryman's, was guided by a design in which two levels of fear and two of food deprivation were combined factorially. Two groups of rats, one deprived for 40 hr. and one for 1 hr., were shocked in a stabilimeter chamber to condition fear to the cues of that situation. Two other, nonfearful groups, one of which was deprived for 40 hr. and the other for 1 hr., were never shocked in the stabilimeter. Instead, they were shocked in a distinctively different chamber to control for amount of aversive stimulation across groups. Results provided by measurements of startle amplitude coiocided with Meryman's in that response magnitudes increased over conditioning trials for the fearful animals but not for the controls and in that rats which were both fearful and deprived exhibited stronger reactions than fearful-only or deprived-only subjects. However, the appetitive variable alone did not exert a potentiating effect. Heart-rate recordings provided marginal evidence for the conditioning of fear. Our results and Meryman's, as well as the discrepancies between them, are explained as due to the depressing effect of near-satiation on the capacity of fear to potentiate startle.Of considerable motivational relevance is t h e question of whether t h e strength of a reflexive response t o a n unconditioned stimulus can be modulated n o t only by changes in t h e adequate stimulus b u t also by variations in presumably irrelevant conditions. O n e instance of such a n effect w a s reported by Brown, Kalish, and Farber ( 1 9 5 1 ) who found that t h e unlearned startle reactions of rats to percussive auditory stimuli were augmented by t h e presence of putative fear-arousing conditioned stimuli. Moreover, the degree of enhancement varied correlatively with experimental conditions believed to affect strength of fear. This phenomenon, currently described as t h e potentiated startle effect, has been confirmed i n a number of studies (Anderson, Johnson,

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Response fixation under anxiety and non-anxiety conditions.

Cited by 97 publications

References 20 publications

Studies on Rigidity and Crystallization of Behavior

Studies on Rigidity and Crystallization of Behavior

The Effects of Punishment on Avoidance Behavior

Startle Potentiation and Heart Rate as Affected by Fear and Hunger

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