Running-wheel activity and avoidance in the mongolian gerbil.
Gerbils learn unsignalled avoidance more slowly yet extinguish it more slowly than rats, with no warm-up dip.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists compared how gerbils, rats, and mice learn wheel-running avoidance.
No warning light or tone came before shock. The animals had to run on schedule to prevent it.
Each species started with the same silent Sidman task: run or get shocked.
What they found
Gerbils took longer to catch on, but once they did they matched rat levels.
Rats showed a warm-up dip at the start of each session; gerbils stayed steady.
When shock was turned off, gerbils kept running longer than rats before they stopped.
How this fits with other research
SIDMAN (1962) first showed rats can avoid using only time cues. The 1969 gerbil study widens that idea to another species.
Kelly et al. (1970) found pigeons beat rats on a treadle task. Gerbils also catch up, so speed differences look species-specific, not rodent-wide.
Edwards et al. (1970) split pigeon data into signalled and unsignalled schedules. Both that paper and the gerbil work show unsignalled avoidance stays strong once learned, even if it starts slow.
Why it matters
If you run unsignalled avoidance tasks, expect slow starts but steady later performance.
Gerbils teach us that warm-up drops are not universal; some learners stay flat.
For clients who keep engaging in old avoidance habits, longer extinction may be normal—plan extra unreinforced practice before you judge progress.
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Join Free →Plot your client’s first-5-minute vs last-5-minute responding; a flat line could mean the habit is already strong, so focus on extinction length, not warm-up cues.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
In the first of two experiments, running-wheel activity and unsignaled (Sidman) avoidance were studied in gerbils and albino rats. All gerbils ran at higher rates than any of the four rats studied. Under the avoidance procedure, four rats developed effective responding; the other two performed much less successfully. While avoidance developed more slowly in the gerbils, all showed asymptotic performance as effective as the four superior rats. The rats showed a consistent warm-up effect, receiving 60% to 80% of the total shocks in the initial third of the session. The gerbils displayed no warm-up, with shocks being evenly distributed over the session. Warm-up in the rats was not related to either response rate or to how effectively the animal was avoiding. When shock was removed, extinction occurred more rapidly in the rats than the gerbils. In the second experiment, which involved two-way shuttle avoidance, gerbils and albino mice quickly acquired the response. All animals met a criterion of 90% avoidance over 80 trials.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1969 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1969.12-779