Abstract
THE behavioural phenomenon known as conditioned suppression was first demonstrated by Estes and Skinner1. They maintained the bar-pressing activity of rats by a schedule of food reinforcement and found that this behaviour decreased in frequency during a stimulus which ended with an unavoidable shock. Estes and Skinner suggested that the suppression of responding was an indirect measurement of “anxiety”. Subsequent workers2 have argued that the temporal relationships between the shock and the stimulus which precedes it satisfy the requirements for classical (respondent) conditioning to occur. After a number of pairings, the conditioned stimulus (pre-shock stimulus) elicits the respondents which were formerly elicited only by the unconditioned stimulus (shock).
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References
Estes, W. K., and Skinner, B. F., J. Exp. Psychol., 29, 390 (1941).
Kamin, L. J., in Classical Conditioning: a Symposium (edit. by Prokasy, W. F.), 118–147 (Appleton–Century–Crofts, New York, 1965).
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Ferster, C. B., and Skinner, B. F., Schedules of Reinforcement (Appleton–Century–Crofts, New York, 1957).
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BLACKMAN, D. Effects of Drugs on Conditioned “Anxiety”. Nature 217, 769–770 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1038/217769a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/217769a0
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