The retention of a simple running response after varying amounts of reinforcement.

The effect of different amounts of reinforcement upon the acquisition and extinction of a simple running response.

“…This is also found in several other reports which have dealt with the problem of acquisition in this experimental situation (i, 3). In a more recent study (6) the same result was obtained when the animals were given 32 reinforced acquisition trials. In the section on experimental results it was noted that no statistically significant differences were obtained in the present experiment when comparisons were made between the final levels of acquisition for the groups receiving 6, 12, 18, and 24 trials.…”

A positive relationship between reinforcement and resistance to extinction produced by removing a source of confusion from a technique that had produced opposite results.

“…'This might also explain why in other experiments with the same technique (3,15) the decrement for a i6-reinforcement group during a one day interval was so great that their retention of the habit was no better than that of an 8-reinforcement group. The cue of just having eaten in the goal box would be absent, of course, on the first trial testing for retention.…”

“…given 16 training trials showed so much decrement when tested for forgetting that their retention of the habit was no better than that of animals given only eight trials (3,15). In Finger's experiment and also in the other experiments in that series, the response measured was the animal's latency in leaving the starting box for a run down an elevated runway three feet long and 11 in.…”

“…In view of the theoretical importance of the problem, it seems desirable to see if Finger's results mean that there is no lawful relationship between the number of reinforcements and resistance to extinction or if, on the other hand, they were a function of some aspect of his experimental technique that introduced a disturbing factor counteracting the effects of reinforcement. The fact that Finger's technique has been used in a number of coordinated studies (2,3,5,6,7,8,13,14,15) designed to investigate the variables influencing learning, increases the desirability of determining whether or not it involved such a source of confusion. That the technique may have contained some peculiar factor of this kind is suggested by a second paradoxical result found in the above studies: namely, that animals 494…”

Extinction and spontaneous recovery of conditioned eyelid responses as a function of amount of acquisition and extinction training.

“…The relevant literature in instrumental conditioning is difficult to assess because of gross methodological differences among the studies. When response latency in a straight runway is employed as the measure, whether or not more acquisition training leads to higher resistance to extinction depends upon the discriminability of the start and goal boxes (3,10,11,12).…”