Double-intermittent reward scheduling and secondary-reinforcer strength: Discriminated escape

Signaled escape and signaled punishment: Additional instrumental conditioning paradigms

“…The present studies support the indications noted by Davenport and his students (Davenport, 1970;Davenport & Eschenbrenner, 1970;Davenport & Lerner, 1968) that the logical possibility of a signaled or discriminated escape paradigm does have reality. Our studies have clearly demonstrated that animals are capable of performing differentially to a signal which precedes "relief" in contrast to a signal which precedes "nonrelief."…”

“…It seems reasonable to expect that Ss can learn to respond differentially to such a situation, but this paradigm has apparently received no experimental study until recently. Davenport and his students (Davenport, 1970;Davenport & Eschenbrenner, 1970;Davenport & Lerner, 1968) have used this paradigm and, although acquisition of a discrimination was not the primary interest in these studies, they report varying degrees of success in obtaining discriminative control.…”

Shock escape vs food-rewarded running in a successive discrimination

“…Generality, as mentioned in the introduction, does not extend to the broad category of escape behavior. Operant studies of discriminative barpressing for shock escape have been reported (e.g., Davenport & Eschenbrenner, 1970), and Woods has shown that rats learn signaled escape in the swimway within 52-78 trials based on brightness cues (Woods, 1973). Also, many studies have used shock-escape, T-maze, discrimination procedures (e.g., Overton, 1968).…”

“…It is quite common to show that a rat can discriminate between black and white runways on the basis of the correlation of reward or nonreward with runway colors (e_g., Bower, 1961). It is also possible to show that rats can form discriminations in escape paradigms; Woods (1973) has reported this for cold-water, runway escape and Davenport for shock produced barpress escape (Davenport & Eschenbrenner, 1970). In fact, Woods has emphasized the uniqueness or the general procedure in paradigm classicification and labeled this case "signaled escape."…”

A taxonomy of instrumental conditioning.

“…In this paradigm, an exteroceptive signal informs the subject whether the escape response will result in "relief" from the aversive stimulation to which he is exposed. Evidence that this is a real paradigm for laboratory studies has been reported (Davenport, 1970;Davenport & Eschenbrenner, 1970;Davenport & Lerner, 1968;Woods, 1973b). To deal with these problems and to attempt to improve on the classification scheme and thus, possibly, clarify our thinking, it is proposed that Grant's third dimension be modified.…”