Abstract
All operations, including nature of chamber and type of shock source, of the Badia and Culbertson (1972 ) inescapable-shock changeover design were replicated with 16 rat subjects. Despite extensive operational replication precautions, only 1 of the 16 subjects showed behavior resembling the changeover behavior of the inescapable-shock subjects reported by Badia and Culbertson (1972). Aside from methodological problems with this type of asymmetrical changeover design which have been raised elsewhere, the present failure in replication appears by itself to suggest that this form of changeover paradigm does not exert sufficient behavioral control to serve as an adequate measure of the preference for signaled or unsignaled shock.
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Furedy, J. J., & Biederman, G. B. Methodological problems in evaluating rat preference for signaled or unsignaled shock. Paper read at Meetings of the Psychonomic Society, Boston, November 1974.
References
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This research was supported by an Atkinson Foundation grant..We are grateful for the expert assistance of G. A. J. Heighington who both accompanied the first author on his visit to Professor Badia’s laboratory and provided the technical work in the replication attempt.
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Biederman, G.B., Furedy, J.J. Operational duplication without behavioral replication of changeover for signaled inescapable shock. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 7, 421–424 (1976). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337235
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337235