Persistent shock-elicited responding engendered by a negative-reinforcement procedure.
Avoidance habits can live on after the payoff stops, so test if the aversive event is still in play.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Schmidt et al. (1969) worked with lab rats.
They first taught each rat to press a lever to stop mild shocks.
After the rats learned, the team kept giving shocks on and off, but shocks no longer stopped when the rat pressed.
They watched how long lever pressing would keep going without any payoff.
What they found
The rats kept pressing the lever for many sessions even though pressing no longer ended the shocks.
Once the shocks stopped completely, the pressing quickly died out.
The behavior had become a habit that did not need the old reward.
How this fits with other research
Malagodi et al. (1975) later showed a way to speed up the first learning.
They used long, mixed warning times before shock.
Rats learned the lever press faster than with short fixed times.
Together the two papers show: avoidance can be locked in quickly, then it may stick around even when it no longer helps.
Davis et al. (1972) mixed in a sound that meant food while the same rats did the shock task.
The food sound made rats pause and get more shocks, yet their total lever presses stayed the same.
This adds that new signals can disrupt, but not always end, old avoidance habits.
Why it matters
Your client’s escape or avoidance behavior may keep running after it no longer pays off.
Check if the old problem is really still in place.
If not, drop the safety behavior and let the response extinguish.
This saves you from adding extra rewards for a habit that is on autopilot.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
A procedure in which responses reduced intermittently presented electric shocks to one quarter of their originally scheduled intensity, effectively engendered and maintained lever pressing in hooded rats. This contingency also markedly increased the response rates of rats initially trained under an unsignaled avoidance procedure. The responding of all animals extinguished rapidly when shock was withdrawn. Subsequently, it was discovered that high response rates could be maintained solely through presentation of shocks that were not affected by responses. Variations in the interval between shocks and changes in shock intensity over a wide range did not attenuate responding. Terminal performance was characterized by a consistent pattern of shock-elicited responses. Responses were also elicited by a tone following repeated tone-shock pairings. Finally, responding that was maintained by response-independent shocks was quickly suppressed by response-contingent shocks of the same intensity.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1969 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1969.12-1049