Abstract
Forty-nine healthy, experimentally naive rats of the Sprague-Dawley strain were trained in a shuttle-avoidance apparatus to a pressurized air US with either an 11 sec. CS-US interval (group I, N = 28) or an 8 sec. CS-US interval (group II, N = 21) and a 2½ min. intertrial interval. CS was a 65 decibel buzzer. No significant difference in rate or nature of learning between groups was found, and they were therefore combined. Forty-five rats acquired the avoidance response to a criterion of five avoidances in six trials in a mean of 9.22 trials (s.e. = 1.00 trial). Acquisition was non-incremental: subjects shifted abruptly from escape responding to avoidance responding (p <.01) without oscillating. The data are contrasted with results from electric shock shuttle-avoidance where learning has been seen repeatedly to be incremental in nature. Results are interpreted as sustaining a one-trial learning hypothesis in shuttle-avoidance acquisition.
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1. Research conducted in the Department of Psychology, North Dakota State University, with support from NSF-Grant 1408.
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Ray, A.J. Non-incremental shuttle-avoidance acquisition to pressurized air US. Psychon Sci 5, 433–434 (1966). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03331034
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03331034