The relative aversiveness of signalled vs unsignalled escapable and inescapable shock

In the first study, subjects escaped shock by pressing on a lever under an unsignalled condition. By pressing a different lever they changed the condition to signalled escape for three minute periods. The second study used the changeover procedure to study inescapable-unavoidable shock. Seven rats were used in each study. All subjects in both studies changed over from unsignalled to signalled conditions. Once contact with the signal condition was made, subjects responded to remain in that condition. The three different extinction conditions showed that the correlated stimulus without the signal had greater control over responding than the signal without the correlated stimulus. An analysis based upon shock and shock-free periods was presented.     

A rate measure of the relative aversiveness of signalled vs unsignalled shock

Five rats were trained on a two-component multiple schedule with each component consisting of a two-link chain schedule. Differential response suppression in the initial links of the chain schedules was used as a measure of the relative aversiveness of events introduced into the subsequent terminal links. When unsignalled shock was scheduled in one terminal link and signalled shock in the other (in addition to equal numbers of food reinforcers), responding was suppressed to a greater degree in the initial link preceding the unsignalled-shock condition. Reversing the terminal-link positions of unsignalled shock and signalled shock led to a reversal of the differential response suppression in the initial links. These results confirm previous findings that signalled shock is less aversive than unsignalled shock and extend the generality of this phenomenon from choice measures to rate measures of aversiveness.     

Concurrent schedules: Quantifying the aversiveness of noise

Four hens worked under independent multiple concurrent variable-interval schedules with an overlaid aversive stimulus (sound of hens in a poultry shed at 100dBA) activated by the first peck on a key. The sound remained on until a response was made on the other key. The key that activated the sound in each component was varied over a series of conditions. When the sound was activated by the left (or right) key in one component, it was activated by the right (or left) key in the other component. Bias was examined under a range of different variable-interval schedules, and the applicability of the generalized matching law was examined. It was found that the hens' behavior was biased away from the sound independently of the schedule in effect and that this bias could be quantified using a modified version of the generalized matching law. Behavior during the changeover delays was not affected by the presence of the noise or by changes in reinforcement rate, even though the total response measures were. Insensitivity shown during the delay suggests that behavior after the changeover delay may be more appropriate as a measure of preference (or aversiveness) of stimuli than are overall behavior measures.     

High voice pitch mitigates the aversiveness of antisocial cues in men's speech

Speech contains both explicit social information in semantic content and implicit cues to social behaviour and mate quality in voice pitch. Voice pitch has been demonstrated to have pervasive effects on social perceptions, but few studies have examined these perceptions in the context of meaningful speech. Here, we examined whether male voice pitch interacted with socially relevant cues in speech to influence listeners’ perceptions of trustworthiness and attractiveness. We artificially manipulated men's voices to be higher and lower in pitch when speaking words that were either prosocial or antisocial in nature. In Study 1 , we found that listeners perceived lower-pitched voices as more trustworthy and attractive in the context of prosocial words than in the context of antisocial words. In Study 2 , we found evidence that suggests this effect was driven by stronger preferences for higher-pitched voices in the context of antisocial cues, as voice pitch preferences were not significantly different in the context of prosocial cues. These findings suggest that higher male voice pitch may ameliorate the negative effects of antisocial speech content and that listeners may be particularly avoidant of those who express multiple cues to antisociality across modalities.     

Relative effects of scopolamine and electroconvulsive shock upon habit reversal in white rats

30 adult male white rats were equally divided into control, scopolamine, and electroconvulsive shock groups to learn 20 successive reversal problems in an E-maze for water after 23 1/2 hr. of deprivation. The noncorrection method was used. After 1 mo. of preliminary training, each scopolamine animal received an intraperitoneal injection of 1 mgm of scopolamine hydrobromide per kgm of body weight while each in the shock group was given an ECS of 35 mA for .2 sec. at the end of every 10 daily trials. When a rat obtained 9 correct of 10 trials, the goal was switched to the opposite side of the maze. Controls were much superior to both experimental groups. While scopolamine animals experienced more detrimental effects initially, they caught up with the shock group and finally became superior. This shift is interpreted in terms of building tolerance to scopolamine and increasing anxiety to shock as effects of differential treatments accumulated.