Negative reinforcement with shock-frequency increase.
A brief pause can reinforce avoidance even when it increases total aversives.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists placed rats in a cage with a metal bar.
Every so often the cage floor gave a mild shock.
The rats could press the bar once.
That single press did not remove shocks.
It only delayed the next shock a few seconds.
Total shocks actually went up, yet the rats kept pressing.
What they found
The rats learned to press even though it hurt more in the long run.
Delay alone was enough to keep the bar-press going.
This shows avoidance can be powered only by a pause, not by less pain.
How this fits with other research
SIDMAN (1962) claimed animals avoid to cut overall shock density.
Gardner et al. (1976) proves the opposite: density can rise and the response still survives.
Lewis et al. (1976) ran the same year with a lever instead of a bar and saw the same thing, a direct replication.
Wheatley et al. (1978) later showed pigeons divide their time between two keys exactly as the matching law predicts when both keys only offer shock-free delays, extending the finding to choice.
Why it matters
Your clients may keep a safety ritual even when it nets more aversive events.
Think of a child who repeatedly asks "Is it safe?" and gets more adult attention, yet the question still grows.
Instead of only counting how often the bad thing happens, look at what tiny pause the behavior buys.
Build interventions that give the same pause through safer means, then thin the delay so the new response survives with less aversive fallout.
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Join Free →Plot the seconds of delay the client gains by engaging in the avoidance behavior, then teach an alternate response that produces the same seconds of safe pause.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two avoidance-conditioning experiments in which responding delayed shocks are reported. Rats receiving an average of two shocks per minute (imposed condition) could produce, by pressing a bar, a 3-min alternate condition. Six (Experiment I) or more (Experiment II) shocks occurred in the alternate condition. All shocks in the alternate condition were delayed and delivered at 1-sec intervals. With long delays, all subjects produced the alternate condition and spent a large percentage of each session in the alternate condition. The first experiment demonstrated that the longer the delay from onset of the alternate condition to onset of the shocks, the more session time spent in the alternate condition. The second experiment indicated that despite increased shock frequency, behavior is acquired and maintained when responding leads to sufficient delay. Individual subjects produced the alternate condition by bar pressing in essentially one of two patterns. One pattern, termed postshock, involved bar pressing immediately after shock; the other, termed posttransition, involved responding immediately after the transition from the alternate to the imposed condition. These results indicate that shock-frequency reduction is not necessary for avoidance conditioning; delay to shock onset is sufficient.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1976 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1976.25-3