Abstract
Rats were trained to leverpress to avoid shock. Typically, Ss emitted a burst of lever responses whenever shock occurred. Following 35 avoidance training sessions, Ss were occasionally presented with a tone (CS) for 1 min before an unavoidable, inescapable shock (US) was administered. Avoidance deteriorated dramatically during CS (conditioned suppression), but a burst of responses occurred on termination of CS-US. When CS was presented without US—the classical extinction procedure—avoidance rapidly recovered during CS, but the response burst made to the termination of CS diminished only gradually and as a function of the number of CS presentations.
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The research was supported by Grant GB 5379 from the National Science Foundation and Grant 572-40 from the National Research Foundation, Canada. The experiment was run with the assistance of Ronald Black.
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Hurwitz, H.M.B. A note on the conditioned stimulus control of postshock responding. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 4, 554–556 (1974). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334288
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334288