The Effect of Shock Intensity Upon Responding Under a Multiple‐avoidance Schedule

Powell, Robert

doi:10.1901/jeab.1970.14-321

Cited by 17 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 26 publications

(31 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Powell (1970) found similar learning trends with shock values of 2.0 rnA and 1.0 rnA. A t test of the difference was not Significant, however, even with nonlearners excluded from the data.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 52%

Free-operant avoidance performance as a function of shock, signal, and shaping parameters

Wesfield

Davey

Misuraca

et al. 1982

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Free-operant avoidance was studied as a function of parametric manipulation of several likely variables in a factorial study. The implications of the present findings for recent studies using free-operant avoidance as a dependent variable are discussed. Sidman's (1953) free-operant avoidance procedure had been intensively studied for approximately a 12-year period . Various manipulations had been attempted to examine the methodological soundness and theoretical importance of that procedure_ More recently, studies challenging the legitimacy of the procedure as a distinct learning type have lessened, and the procedure continues to be used as a tool in various experimental contexts (i.e _, Capobianco, MacDougall, & Foster, 1977;Gaebelein & Howard, 1979;Mason & Fibiger, 1979;McCord, Hamlin, Pool, & Milner, 1979;Savaki & Lewis, 1977;Young & Black, 1979). It is not clear from a survey of the literature whether sufficient control in free-operant avoidance exists in the simple parametric sense aside from issues relating to the theoretical Significance of such behavior_This experiment was performed to delineate the effects of three salient factors on free-operant avoidance: shock intensity, the use of a warning stimulus, and the preshaping of subjects to a barpress escape response. METHOD SUbjectsTwenty-four experimentally naive l2O-day-old Wistar rats, maintained at their free-feeding weights, were used in this experiment. ApparatusTwo single-bar stations (Grason-Stadler Model E31256-100) were housed in sound-attenuating animal chests (Grason-Stadler ModelllOl) with a BRS/LVE audio generator AU-902/112.(l5 providing white masking noise and a (340-cps) warning tone of 90 dB. Shock was delivered from a BRS/LVE shock generator (Model SG-903) and shock scrambler (Model SC-922) through floor grids. ProcedureAll subjects were trained in free-operant avoidance (Sidman, 1953) in which the shock-shock interval was 5 sec and the response-shock interval was 20 sec. Responses in the presence of The authors thank G. A. Heighington for his expert technical assistance. This work was supported by a grant from the National Science and Engineering Council of Canada to G. B. Biederman.Copyright 1982 Psychonomic SOciety, Inc. 105shock did not terminate the shock. Each subject was tested for 12 2-h sessions, and total responses and shocks per session were recorded. Cumulative records of each session were maintained. Subjects were tested under three conditions. Half the subjects were trained under a shock intensity of 1.2 rnA (high shock), and half the subjects served under a shock intensity of .8 rnA. A 2 by 2 by 2 factorial design was used, with shock intensity, warning stimulus (tone vs. no stimulus), and preshaping of barpress response vs. no shaping as factors. The shaping procedure consisted of training escape from shock by reinforcing successive approximations to the operant when necessary prior to the session. Shaping terminated when 10 barpresses were emitted_ RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONStatistical assessment of the dependent variables o...

show abstract

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 52%

Free-operant avoidance performance as a function of shock, signal, and shaping parameters

Wesfield

Davey

Misuraca

et al. 1982

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…of the degree of warmup are needed. Previous reports (e.g., Leander, 1973;Powell, 1970) Duration of warmup for Rats 2-4 and 10-4 was assessed by recording the elapsed time from the beginning of a session until a 42-sec shock-free interval occurred. The 42-sec interval was then subtracted, leaving the elapsed time to the beginning of the interval.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Increased shock intensities either had no appreciable effects (Powell, 1970), or affected mainly the late-session performances, rather than early-session warmup (Hoffman, Fleshler, 87 1978, 29, 87-103 NUMBER I (JANUARY) and Chorny, 1961;Leander, 1973). Supplementary positive reinforcement, contingent on the avoidance response, reduced the warmup but did not eliminate it (Hineline, 1966).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

WARMUP IN AVOIDANCE AS A FUNCTION OF TIME SINCE PRIOR TRAINING¹

Hineline

1978

J Exper Analysis Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

On avoidance procedures, rats and pigeons typically show warmup effects, characterized by improving performance within sessions and loss of the improvement ("warmup decrement") between sessions. Between-session losses were examined by varying the time between periods of avoidance training. In one experiment, rats lived fulltime in conditioning chambers while intermission intervals were varied. In a second experiment, the animals lived in home cages between sessions; timeout intervals were introduced at midsession, producing recurrence of warmup in the second half-session. In both experiments, the warmup decrements increased substantially as the timeout or intersession intervals were increased from zero to 30 minutes. With intervals of 60 or 120 minutes, the decrements approached or exceeded those obtained with intervals of a day or more. When avoidance was interposed between appetitive sessions, the appetitive responding was disrupted, but this seemed unrelated to the warmup or to the proficiency of avoidance. The warmup in avoidance shares characteristics with transient punishment effects, with the Kamin effect, and with habituation phenomena, but it is premature to assume that they reflect common processes.

show abstract

“…It may be a result of using animals that are such poor avoiders. Powell (1970), using an unsignalled avoidance experiment with different shock intensities (1.0 vs 2.0 mA) in each of two multiple schedule components, also reported shock intensity to have no effect on warm-up. Perhaps interactions between components of the multiple sclhedule precluded the intensity variable from exerting an effect upon the warmup.…”

Section: Apparatusmentioning

confidence: 96%

“…In a signalled avoidance experiment, increases in shock voltage produced no stable changes in the shock disproportionality exhibited (Hoffman, et al, 1961). In an unsignalled avoidance task with 1.0 mA as the shock intensity in one component and 2.0 mA as the value in the alternate component of a multiple 481 1973,19,[481][482][483][484][485][486][487][488][489][490] NUMBER 3 (MAY) schedule, Powell (1970) also found no reliable effect of shock intensity on the warm-up phenomenon.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

SHOCK INTENSITY AND DURATION INTERACTIONS ON FREE‐OPERANT AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR¹

Leander¹

1973

J Exper Analysis Behavior

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Shock intensities (1 to 4 mA) and shock durations (0.3 to 0.75 sec) were concurrently varied over a range commonly used in free-operant avoidance studies using a lever-press response. Response rates were a positive linear function of the log of the product of intensity times duration. Shock rates were a negative linear function of that log. The increase in response rates was primarily due to a selective increase in the conditional probability of making responses with long interresponse times. The disproportionality of receiving shocks early in the session (warm-up) was also a linear function of the log of the intensity-duration product, with increasing disproportionality as the value of the intensity-duration product was increased. Thus, with all measures of the avoidance perforlnance, shock intensity and shock duration combine in a multiplicative fashion to determine the avoidance performance.Shock-avoidance behavior has been repeatedly demonstrated to be a function of the slhock intensity used. In Sidman's (1953) freeoperant avoidance paradigm, increases in shock intensity over a range from 0.5 mA to 3.7 mA produced increases in the rates of responding by well-trained rats (Boren, Sidman, and Herrnstein, 1959). In that experiment, each lever depression postponed shock for 20 sec, but upon failure to avoid a shock, a response was required to terminate the shock.Thus, the duration of shock was controlled by the animal and was not constant across different intensity values. The average duration of shock at each intensity value (actually the average response latency upon shock onset) was an inverse function of shock intensity. Subsequiently, in studies with shock duration held constant, response rates have been shown to increase as a monotonic function of shock intensity (Powell, 1971 1970; Riess, 1970). Hayes and MacKinnon (1968) suggested that increases in shock duration had rate increasing effects similar to increases in shock intensity. Riess (1970) manipulated shock durations over a range from 0.05 to 0.3 sec while holding shock intensity constant at 0.5 mA. He found that response rates were a positive monotonic function of shock duration similar to the function obtained by increasing shock intensity at a constant shock duration. Riess did not manipulate both shock intensity and duration in the same experiment.

show abstract

The Effect of Shock Intensity Upon Responding Under a Multiple‐avoidance Schedule

Cited by 17 publications

References 26 publications

Free-operant avoidance performance as a function of shock, signal, and shaping parameters

Free-operant avoidance performance as a function of shock, signal, and shaping parameters

WARMUP IN AVOIDANCE AS A FUNCTION OF TIME SINCE PRIOR TRAINING¹

SHOCK INTENSITY AND DURATION INTERACTIONS ON FREE‐OPERANT AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR¹

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

The Effect of Shock Intensity Upon Responding Under a Multiple‐avoidance Schedule

Cited by 17 publications

References 26 publications

Free-operant avoidance performance as a function of shock, signal, and shaping parameters

Free-operant avoidance performance as a function of shock, signal, and shaping parameters

WARMUP IN AVOIDANCE AS A FUNCTION OF TIME SINCE PRIOR TRAINING1

SHOCK INTENSITY AND DURATION INTERACTIONS ON FREE‐OPERANT AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR1

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

WARMUP IN AVOIDANCE AS A FUNCTION OF TIME SINCE PRIOR TRAINING¹

SHOCK INTENSITY AND DURATION INTERACTIONS ON FREE‐OPERANT AVOIDANCE BEHAVIOR¹