Duration and rate of reinforcement as determinants of concurrent responding

The duration and frequency of food presentation were varied in concurrent variable-interval variable-interval schedules of reinforcement. In the first experiment, in which pigeons were exposed to a succession of eight different schedules, neither relative duration nor relative frequency of reinforcement had as great an effect on response distribution as they have when they are manipulated separately. These results supported those previously reported by Todorov (1973) and Schneider (1973). In a second experiment, each of seven pigeons was exposed to only one concurrent schedule in which the frequency and/or duration of reinforcement differed on the two keys. Under these conditions, each pigeon's relative rate of response closely matched the relative total access to food that each schedule provided. This result suggests that previous failures to obtain matching may be due to factors such as an insufficient length of exposure to each schedule or to the pigeons' repeated exposure to different concurrent schedules.     

Some effects of punishment upon unpunished responding

Animals permitted free access to a running wheel and drinking tube increased the amount of running when drinking was punished with electric shock. Additional experiments demonstrated that the simple presence or absence of a drinking tube (or running wheel) was a sufficient condition to observe a decrease or an increase in the alternative response. A quantitative analysis of these interactions observed between the incompatible running and drinking responses suggested that each response occupied a constant proportion of the time available for it. These results question an interpretation of the increase in unpunished alternative responding based upon its avoidance properties.     

Abortive responding during punishment of bar holding

A continuous chain of homogeneous responding was established in rats by training animals to hold a lever down for 10 sec or longer before releasing it for food reinforcement. When criterion releases were subsequently punished, completed holding chains were greatly suppressed, aborted chains increased markedly, while the rate of chain initiations remained unchanged.     

Superstitious perception: Response-independent reinforcement and punishment as determinants of recurring eccentric interpretations

This study provided controlled observations of a potential mechanism for the determination of the repetitive, aberrant perceptions or interpretations of everyday events that figure prominently in a range of psychological disorders: the adventitious reinforcement of acts of cognition by the actual consequences of concurrent motor acts. Adults made a series of two-choice brightness discriminations; on 60% of trials, choosing the brighter stimulus produced a “correct” signal while errors produced an aversive sound. On 40% of trials, the choice stimuli did not in fact differ in brightness; the consequences of responding on these “identical stimuli” trials differed across blocks of trials. Thus, on these trials perceptual judgments were directly followed by events that they did not produce. When all choices on identical stimuli trials were punished with the “error” sound, subjects showed little preference for the left-side or right-side identical stimuli, but when all choices of identical stimuli were reinforced with the “correct” light, individual preferences for the left-side or the right-side stimuli substantially increased. As the consequences of responding on identical stimuli trials were independent of the stimuli chosen, these findings provide evidence for superstitious perception, the reinforcement of perceptual acts by events that do not depend upon their occurrence.     

Transfer of approach responding between punishment, frustrative nonreward, and the combination of punishment and nonreward

Rats trained to make an approach response with either partial reward, intermittent punishment, or a combination of partial reward and intermittent punishment, were tested for persistence to extinction, punishment with reward, or punishment during extinction. Partial reward, alone or with punishment, produced greates resistance to extinction, while intermittent punishment, alone or with partial reward, produced greatest persistence to punishment with reward. Transfer of persistence from partial reward to punishment with reward and intermittent punishment to extinction was also demonstrated. However, partial reward alone did not increase persistence to punishment during extinction, whereas intermittent punishment and partial reward combined with intermittent punishment did increase such persistence. These results were interpreted in Amsel's (1958, 1962) conditioning-model theory by extending the hypothesized similarity of frustrative nonreward and punishment.     

Intermittent punishment of human responding maintained by intermittent reinforcement

To determine the effects of variable-interval shock punishment on behavior maintained by variable-interval and variable-ratio reinforcement, human subjects' key-pressing behavior was reinforced with money on a four-component multiple schedule. Components 1 and 2 were variable-interval 30-sec, and Components 3 and 4 were variable-ratio 210. After responding was stabilized, response-contingent electric shock was scheduled on a variable-interval 10-sec schedule during the second and fourth components of each cycle. Subjects instructed as to the reinforcement contingencies showed gradually increasing suppression of variable-interval responding at increasing shock intensities and either very high or very low rates of variable-ratio responding at higher intensities. Minimally instructed subjects showed suppression at higher shock intensities, but no clear differential suppression as a function of reinforcement schedule. Recovery from initial suppression was observed within sessions.     

Some effects of punishment shock intensity upon discriminative responding

Three pigeons received visual discrimination training under both multiple variable-ratio extinction and variable-interval extinction schedules. All birds developed nearly perfect discrimination. When punishment for every tenth response during food reinforcement was presented, responding decreased as shock intensity increased. At the same time, responding during extinction, which was not punished, increased at intermediate punishment intensities, but returned to low levels under severe punishment. A second procedure, in which punishment and no-punishment sessions alternated unsystematically, was employed with two of the birds. The results under this procedure essentially replicated the data obtained as punishment shock intensity increased gradually.     

Effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine on responding suppressed by conditioned punishment

Key pecking by two pigeons, maintained under a variable-interval two-minute schedule of food presentation, was suppressed when each response produced a five-second visual stimulus that was occasionally paired with shock. Stimulus-shock pairings occurred independently of responding according to a variable-time six-minute schedule for one bird or once per session for the other bird. The effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine were assessed on this baseline of behavior suppressed by conditioned punishment. Chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in the rate of punished responding, whereas d-amphetamine produced only decreases. In addition, chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in response rate during the response-produced and response-independent stimulus presentations; d-amphetamine, however, only decreased responding during stimulus presentations.     

The effect of punishment shock intensity upon responding under multiple schedules

In the first of two experiments, responses of two pigeons were maintained by multiple variable-interval, variable-ratio schedules of food reinforcement. Concurrent punishment was introduced, which consisted of a brief electric shock after each tenth response. The initial punishment intensities had no lasting effect upon responding. Then, as shock intensity increased, variable-ratio response rates were suppressed more quickly than variable-interval response rates. When shock intensity decreased, variable-interval responding recovered more quickly, but the rates under both schedules eventually returned to their pre-punishment levels. In the second experiment, the following conditions were studied in three additional pigeons: (1) With each shock intensity in effect for a number of sessions, punishment shock intensity was gradually increased and decreased and responding was maintained by multiple variable-ratio, fixed-ratio schedules of food reinforcement; (2) Changes in punishment shock intensity as described above with responding maintained by either a variable-ratio or a fixed-ratio schedule, which were presented on alternate days; (3) Session-to-session changes in shock intensity with responding maintained by multiple variable-ratio, fixed-ratio schedules. Responding under the two schedules was suppressed to approximately the same extent by a particular shock intensity. Also, post-reinforcement pauses under the fixed-ratio schedule increased as response suppression increased.     

Intermittent punishment of SΔ responding in matching to sample

Incorrect matching responses of two pigeons on matching to sample were either continuously (CRF) or intermittently (FR) followed by a time out (TO). The matching accuracy was examined as a function of both TO duration and TO frequency (ratio size). With intermediate TO durations (10 sec, 1 min), accuracy increased as the frequency of TO increased. With an extremely short (1 sec) and an extremely long (10 min) TO duration, accuracy was poor over the entire range of frequencies.     

Transfer of approach responding between punishment and frustrative nonreward sustained through continuous reinforcement

A block of continuously reinforced nonpunished trials was interpolated between acquisition of a runway response with either partial reinforcement or intermittent punishment and subsequent tests for resistance of that response to the suppressive effects of either extinction or continuous punishment. As previous investigations have shown, both the partial reinforcement effect (PRE) and the intermittent punishment effect (IPE) were sustained through the block of continuously reinforced nonpunished trials. Furthermore, the increased resistance to extinction following intermittent punishment and the increased resistance to punishment following partial reinforcement were also sustained through the interpolated continuous reinforcement. These results support a hypothesized similarity of punishment and frustrative nonreward and were interpreted in an extension of Amsel's conditioning model theory of the role of nonreinforcement in the PRE.     

Fear of snakes and facial reactions: A case of rapid emotional responding

The aim of the present study was to explore how rapid emotional responses are manifested as facial electromyographic (EMG) reactions when people with explicit fear of snakes are exposed to their fear relevant stimuli. Fifty-six subjects, high or low in fear of snakes, were exposed to pictures of snakes and flowers while facial EMG activity from the corrugator supercilii and the zygomatic major muscle regions was recorded. Measures of autonomic activity and ratings of the stimuli were also collected. Pictures of snakes evoked a rapid corrugator supercilii muscle reaction which was larger in the High fear group as early as 500ms after stimulus onset. The High fear group also rated snakes as more unpleasant and displayed larger skin conductance responses (SCRs) and increased heart rate (HR) when exposed to snakes. Pictures of flowers tended to evoke increased zygomatic major muscle activity which did not differ among the groups. The present results demonstrate that the facial EMG technique is sensitive enough to detect rapidly evoked negative emotional reactions. The results support the hypothesis that people high in fear of snakes are disposed to react very rapidly with a negative emotional response to their fear relevant stimuli.     

Resistance to punishment as a function of intensity and frequency of prior punishment experience

Rats with a history of intermittent punishment have been found to persist in the face of continuous punishment. It was predicted from an extension of frustration theory to punishment that increasing the intensity or frequency of intermittent punishment would increase persistence to high fear elicited by continuous punishment. Two experiments, employing 310 rats, verified this prediction for both intensity and frequency manipulations but indicated rather narrow boundary conditions for their effects.     

Gossip as an effective and low-cost form of punishment

The spreading of reputational information about group members through gossip represents a widespread, efficient, and low-cost form of punishment. Research shows that negative arousal states motivate individuals to gossip about the transgressions of group members. By sharing information in this way groups are better able to promote cooperation and maintain social control and order.     

Effect of beta-funaltrexamine on retention of passive-avoidance conditioning

Rats received administration of an opiate antagonist immediately following single-trial passive-avoidance training. Retention of passive-avoidance conditioning was assessed 1 week after training. Compared to noninjected and vehicle-injected control groups, post-training naloxone (2.0 mg/kg) administration significantly increased retention. A comparable facilitation of retention was also observed when animals received post-training administration of beta-funaltrexamine (40 mg/kg). These data provide additional support for mu opiate receptor activity in the regulation of memory processes.     

Fear of success as a situational phenomenon

This study was designed to determine whether different arousing situations will generate different responses in fear-of-success (FOS) and performance behavior. Female subjects were given instructions stating that the tasks they were going to complete would later be evaluated by a panel of males, females, or persons in order to determine whether the panel would select them as a potential friend, co-worker, or acquaintance. Results indicated that no significant differences in FOS were due to the different situations. However, there was evidence to conclude that level of performance behavior depends on the situation in which it is measured. Possible explanations for the failure to find FOS situational are discussed, as well as the inability to explain the significant interaction in performance behavior.