Autocontingencies: Suppressive and accelerative effects of pairs of shocks superimposed on a positively reinforced operant baseline.
Shock timing flips behavior: short gaps suppress, long gaps accelerate, and a warning cue resets the baseline.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team worked with rats pressing a lever for food on a fixed-interval schedule.
While the rats worked, the cage floor delivered pairs of mild shocks.
The shocks came with no warning light or tone.
The only thing that changed was the gap between the two shocks in each pair.
What they found
Short gaps silenced the lever press.
Long gaps made the rats press faster than before.
When a tone was added and paired with the shocks, the rats returned to their old speed.
Timing, not just shock itself, steered the behavior.
How this fits with other research
Zeiler (1968) saw the same flip: low-intensity shock cues sped up DRL responding, high-intensity cues slowed FI responding.
The pattern shows baseline schedule sets whether aversive events help or hurt.
SHETTLEWORTCHARNEY et al. (1965) showed that shock tied to the response suppresses faster but also returns faster.
Iversen et al. (1984) extend that idea: even non-contingent shock pairs can either punish or boost, depending on the interval.
Last et al. (1984), from the same lab the same year, found that shock contingent on long pauses shortened pauses.
Together the two 1984 papers say the same thing: when the shock lands relative to the response or to another shock decides the outcome.
Why it matters
You can think about aversive events like a scalpel, not a hammer.
If two setbacks hit a client in quick succession, you may see shutdown.
Space the same events farther apart and you might see a burst of effort.
Track the timing of negative events in your session.
A short gap could signal a need to insert a prompt or reinforcer.
A long gap might be a natural window to shape faster responding.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Previous research has shown that unsignaled shock may accelerate positively reinforced operant responding if each shock signals a subsequent shock-free period. In order to explore the boundary conditions of this effect, two experiments were performed. In Experiment 1, pairs of unsignaled shocks separated by 15, 30, 60, or 120 seconds resulted in suppressed responding during the briefest intershock interval, and in accelerated responding during the longer intervals. When the second shock in each pair signaled a shock-free period of at least 3 minutes, accelerated responding also followed offset of the second shock in all but the 30-second condition. In Experiment 2, the addition of a conditioned stimulus prior to each pair of shocks restored baseline responding, and eliminated accelerative control following the second shock only under the briefest inter-shock interval. The results are discussed in terms of the similarity between autocontingencies (shock/no-shock relations; Davis, Memmott, & Hurwitz, 1975) and recent modifications of the feature-positive procedure (e.g., Reberg & Memmott, 1979), which stress stimulus control by shock/no-shock relationships.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1984 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1984.42-75