Maintenance and suppression of responding under schedules of electric shock presentation.

The team set up two shock schedules for lab animals. One schedule gave shocks every three minutes no matter what the animal did. The other schedule gave a shock right after each response.

They watched whether the animals kept pressing the lever or stopped. The goal was to see if the timing of shocks, not just the pain, changed behavior.

Animals kept pressing when shocks came every three minutes. The same animals stopped pressing when each press brought instant shock.

The result shows a sharp split: a loose shock schedule can keep behavior alive, while a tight response-shock link shuts it down.

Kendrick et al. (1981) ran the same every-three-minute shock and also saw steady responding. They proved the schedule, not a hidden "safety" period, kept the behavior going.

James et al. (1981) took the idea further. They used a complex second-order shock schedule and got the same scalloped pattern usually seen with food rewards. This extends the 1972 finding to richer, multi-layered schedules.

Filby et al. (1966) looks like a clash at first glance. They saw full suppression once shock reached 0.6 mA. The difference is schedule: Y used shock as punishment on top of food, while W used shock alone as the maintaining consequence. Same stimulus, different job.

For BCBAs the lesson is clear: even aversive events can feed behavior if they arrive on a loose, intermittent schedule. Check your unintentional reinforcement loops. A staff glance, brief reprimand, or even a gasp that follows challenging behavior every few minutes can keep it alive. Flip to an immediate, continuous consequence if you want rapid suppression, and pair it with strong reinforcement for the replacement skill.