Abstract
During Phase 1, all rats received a delay of food reward following a traversal of a straight alley. During Phase 2, rats received contingent (CR), noncontingent (NCR), or no food reward (NR) in an operant chamber. During the 1st day of Phase 3 (running in the straight alley), no differences in speeds occurred between groups receiving contingent and noncontingent food. However, during the 3rd day of Phase 3, Group NCR ran significantly slower than Groups CR and NR, suggesting that noncontingent reinforcement does not interfere with the retention of prior learning, but may impair the further learning of a response partially learned prior to receiving uncontrollability (response-independent rewards).
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Calef, R.S., Choban, M.C., Dickson, M.W. et al. The effects of noncontingent reinforcement on the behavior of a previously learned running response. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 27, 263–266 (1989). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334602
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334602