Abstract
Eight groups of five rats were trained to jump to a retractable shelf to avoid footshock. Before footshock was terminated and tests conducted for extinction of responding, one-half were trained for about 35 trials and one-half for about 310 trials. For 50 days prior to training, one-half of the rats lived individually in small cages and one-half lived in large cages, 12 rats a cage. These two pretesting factors, plus a factor of presence or absence of response prevention given just before testing for extinction of avoidance, combined to yield a 2 by 2 by 2 experimental design. Rats took reliably longer to extinguish avoidance if they were trained more and if they were from group housing. The demonstration that pretraining housing is a reliable source of variance suggests that this factor should be controlled in studies of deconditioning of avoidance.
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This study was supported by Bradley’s Board for Research which administers NSF Grant GU 3320. This study was part of a research program codirected by H. R. Miller who is now at Southern Illinois University.
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Sautter, F.J., Reid, L.D. Effects of prolonged training, differential housing, and response prevention on persisting avoidance in rats. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 2, 239–241 (1973). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329260
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03329260