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Competing responses and resistance to extinction

University of British Columbia

At birth, male and female rats were randomly assigned to either a handled or nonhandled condition. The handled Ss were given tactual stimulation for a five minute period from days five to twenty-five. During the preweaning period Ss in the nonhandled condition were given the least possible amount of experimenter handling. When Ss were between 80 to 100 days old both handled and nonhandled Ss were randomly assigned to one of four acquisition conditions and were trained and tested in a straight alley runway. These conditions were; continuous reinforcement in a large goalbox, continuous reinforcement in a small goalbox, partial reinforcement in a large goalbox, and partial reinforcement in a small box. Each S was then given 60 acquisition trials at the rate of 5 trials per day. Following completion of the acquisition trials all Ss received 50 nonreward trials which were also given in blocks of 5 trials per day. On both acquisition and extinction trials, time measures were taken for startbox and runway performance. For the purpose of analysis all time measures were converted into speed scores. The results showed that all experimental treatments, (i.e. handling, reward schedule and goalbox size), had a significant effect on the rate of experimental extinction. Infantile handling, a partial reinforcement schedule, and a large goalbox were all conducive to decreasing the rate of extinction of a running response.

Text

2011-08-04

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/36487

Psychology

University of British Columbia

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