Unsignalled avoidance in a shuttlebox: a rapid acquisition, high-efficiency paradigm.
Rats master silent shuttlebox avoidance in one session, giving clinicians a quick, sturdy baseline for further research.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Leander et al. (1972) put rats in a two-sided box. No lights. No tones. Just a timer.
If the rat stayed on one side too long, it got a brief shock. Crossing the beam reset the clock.
The team watched how fast the rats learned to keep moving and stay shock-free.
What they found
On day one most rats dodged over 70% of the shocks. Soon they were taking fewer than five trips per minute and almost never getting shocked.
The behavior locked in quickly and stayed rock-steady with almost zero effort.
How this fits with other research
Macphail (1968) saw the same speed and 90% success in pigeons, so the shuttlebox trick works across species.
Mulvaney et al. (1974) used the same box and showed rats time their moves like a clock, stretching or shrinking trips to match the hidden interval.
BOLLEHOFFMAN et al. (1964) proved that quick feedback after each move matters; D et al. simply removed all signals and still got the same rapid learning.
Why it matters
Free-operant avoidance with no warnings is a clean, fast baseline for future work. If you need a stable, low-rate avoidance response in animal models, skip the buzzers and lights. Set a silent reset contingency, watch the behavior crystallize in one session, and you are ready to test drugs, genes, or adjunct interventions without confounding cues.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Detailed descriptive data are provided on the free-operant avoidance behavior of rats in a shuttlebox during both acquisition and terminal performance. Initially, eighteen 21-min acquisition sessions were given. Each hurdle-cross postponed the next shock 20 sec (response-shock interval) and shocks were scheduled every 5 sec (shock-shock interval) in the absence of a response. All eight subjects avoided over 70% of the shocks due (12/min) in Session 1. Maximum response rates were reached by the third session and declined slowly while shock rates continued to drop slowly through Session 15. Three subjects were run an additional five months with a response-shock interval of 20 sec and their terminal response rates were all under five responses per minute and shock rates were 0.07 per minute. Interresponse time distributions for terminal performance showed that over 95% of all responding by all three subjects occurred in the last half of the response-shock interval.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1972 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1972.18-169