Interresponse-time punishment: a basis for shock-maintained behavior.
Shock timed to long pauses can punish yet also maintain responding without any escape or food.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists worked with three pigeons in a small lab box.
Each peck on the left key gave food on a schedule.
If a pigeon waited too long between pecks, it got a quick shock through the floor.
The team watched how the birds changed their timing and speed.
What they found
Shock for long pauses made the birds peck faster and shorten the gaps.
When the shock rule stayed but food stopped, the birds kept pecking.
The shock alone kept the behavior alive with no food and no escape.
How this fits with other research
SHETTLEWORTCHARNEY et al. (1965) saw shock stop pecking fast. Last et al. (1984) show the same shock can keep pecking alive. The twist is timing: shock for a long pause acts like a cue to peck sooner, not stop.
HAKMCMILLAN et al. (1965) paired a light with shock and saw big suppression. Last et al. (1984) removed the extra signal and hit the pause itself. Without the warning stimulus, shock works like a goad instead of a stop sign.
Green et al. (1975) proved that taking away timeout can kill shock-maintained behavior. Last et al. (1984) go further: shock timed right can maintain behavior even with no timeout at all.
Why it matters
The lesson is in the clock. A consequence that usually stops behavior can keep it going if you tie it to the exact pause you want to shrink. When you design punishment or emergency procedures, check the micro-timing, not just the consequence. A delay that feels tiny to you may flip suppression into maintenance.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Lever pressing of squirrel monkeys postponed brief electric shock according to a free-operant shock-postponement procedure. Pressing also produced shock with a probability proportional to the duration of the current interresponse time in some conditions, or to the fifth ordinally-preceding interresponse time in others. These conditions provided equal frequencies and temporal distributions of response-produced shocks either contingent on or independent of the current interresponse-time duration, respectively. Shock delivered contingent on the current interresponse-time duration resulted in shorter mean interresponse times and higher overall response rates that shock delivered independent of the current interresponse time. In subsequent conditions, response-produced shocks were sufficient to maintain responding following suspension of the postponement procedure only when those shocks were contingent on the current interresponse time. Presenting shock independent of the current interresponse time, conversely, suppressed response rate and ultimately led to cessation of responding in the absence of a conjoint shock-postponement procedure. These results demonstrate interresponse-time punishment in the absence of any indirect avoidance contingencies based on overall shock-frequency reduction, and strongly support similar interpretation at the more local level of shock-frequency reduction correlated with particular interresponse times. Differential punishment of long interresponse times also provides both an a priori basis for predicting whether a schedule of shock presentation will maintain or suppress responding and a framework for interpreting many of the functional relations between overall response rate and parameters of consequent shock presentation. Finally, these results and others indicate the importance of response-consequence contiguity above and beyong any notion of noncontiguous contingency in the control of behavior.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1984 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1984.41-291