The role of temporal discriminations in the reinforcement of Sidman avoidance behavior.
In Sidman avoidance, the real reinforcer is the animal's own shift from 'danger time' to 'safe time' right after a response.
01Research in Context
What this study did
ANGER (1963) wrote a theory paper. He asked: why does a rat keep pressing a lever when no shock ever comes? The rat is on a Sidman avoidance schedule. Each press delays the next shock. No lights or tones tell the rat when to press.
D said the real reinforcer is a time shift. After a press, the next shock moves further away. The rat feels the shock as 'far' rather than 'near'. That internal time stamp is what strengthens the response.
What they found
The paper did not collect new data. It pulled together earlier rat studies. D showed that shock delay alone can reinforce behavior. The key is the animal's own temporal discrimination.
He called the change from 'remote' to 'recent' post-response time the hidden reward.
How this fits with other research
BOLLEHOFFMAN et al. (1964) tested the idea next year. They gave rats immediate click feedback after each press. Animals learned fast. The result backs D's claim: a quick stimulus change helps the rat mark the safer time zone.
Kaufman (1965) zoomed in closer. He tracked every second of the session. Response speed rose right after a shock and slowed as time passed. The pattern matches D's temporal map.
Thomas (1968) flipped the problem. He turned shocks off completely. Avoidance died in under four hours. When the aversive clock is gone, the time discrimination has no value, just as D predicted.
Why it matters
You can use the same rule with people. Give a clear signal right after the desired avoidance act. A click, brief vibration, or a spoken 'good' stamps the safe period. The client learns to 'feel' time like the rat, even without external warnings. Keep the delay short between the act and the signal; that is the glue that holds the behavior in place.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Animals learn to avoid with the Sidman procedure even though the avoidance response is not followed by the termination of any warning stimulus in the environment. What reinforces this response? The accepted explanation has been that the avoidance response is reinforced when it terminates other behavior that has become aversive by pairing with shock. However, the reinforcement may also be derived from the temporal discriminations that develop with Sidman avoidance. These and other temporal discriminations show that the animal has available some events that vary with the postresponse time. The shock will closely follow the temporal stimuli at long postresponse times and would be expected to make them aversive. The stimuli at short postresponse times would have a relatively low aversiveness due to their more remote relation to shock. Since the avoidance response changes a long postresponse time to a short one, that response would be followed by a decrease in aversiveness which would reinforce it. When sharp temporal discriminations are present, reinforcement from the decrease in aversiveness of temporal stimuli probably plays a dominant role in maintaining the avoidance response. This formulation fits the available data and has adequate answers for the objections that have been raised to earlier conceptions of the role temporal discriminations might play in Sidman avoidance. Although under some conditions the reinforcement in Sidman avoidance seems to be primarily due to the decrease in aversiveness of temporal stimuli, under other conditions there probably is reinforcement from the termination of conditioned aversive responses.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1963 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1963.6-s477