Fixed‐ratio Punishment With Continuous Reinforcement

Abstract

Rats were reinforced with water for every bar-press and concurrently punished for every 10th or 20th bar-press. Punishment produced an initial suppression of responding followed by recovery. A slight change in the method of delivering punishment eventually led to a high response rate just after punishment, a low response rate just before punishment, and frequent intermediate pauses. The results are interpreted as showing that punishment became a safe signal and that the high rate of responding it released came to act as a conditioned aversive stimulus. The effects of amphetamine were consistent with this interpretation. Alcohol had the paradoxical effect of increasing pauses and depressing the low rate before punishment. Azrin (1956) Consequently, the reinforcement schedule would counteract any tendency of the punishment schedule to produce high rates. This consideration is less relevant to Azrin's original study of response-correlated shock, in 'Reprints may be obtained from

DRUGS AND PUNISHED RESPONDING II: d‐AMPHETAMINE‐INDUCED INCREASES IN PUNISHED RESPONDING1

“…These results are consistent with previous reports (Geller and Seifter, 1960;Hendry and Van-Toller, 1964;Hanson et al, 1967;Morrison, 1969) that amphetamines do not increase punished responding.…”

“…In Figure 4, this is seen as more points falling below the dashed line, and in Figure 3, as lower overall rates at higher doses of d-amphetamine. A number of investigators have reported the failure of the amphetamines to increase rates of punished responding (Geller and Seifter, 1960;Hendry and Van-Toller, 1964;Hanson et al, 1967;Morrison, 1969 (FR 30) than when the punishment frequency was high. If both shock intensity and shock frequency can be considered to contribute to the severity of punishment, then it appears that by increasing the severity of punishment the rate-increasing effects of the amphetamines can be attenuated.…”

“…At a dose of 0.4 mg/kg of d-amphetamine, the rate of punished responding decreased for 11 of 15 rats, but increased for the other rats. Hendry and Van Toller (1964), also using rats as subjects, reinforced each response with water and punished responses at different shock intensities and frequencies (every tenth or every twentieth response). In these experiments, relatively high rates of punished responding were reduced in all six rats by all doses of dl-amphetamine (1.0, 2.0, and 3.0 mg/kg).…”

Effects of sucrose concentration and food deprivation on fixed-ratio punishment of licking

“…Despite extensive exposure to the FR 200 schedule in the present studies, however, there was no evidence in the cumulative records of differential response rate as a function of position in the ratio, except for short postshock pauses. These data are in accord with the resuIts of other studies which -indicate that no negative acceleration occurs between shocks in FR punishment situations when the manipulandum is not part of the shock circuit (Azrin, Holz, & Hake, 1963;Hendry & Van Toller, 1964).…”

PERIODIC SHOCK WITH ADDED CLOCK1

“…However, with simple negative reinforcement too, a relatively high rate occurs after the aversive stimulus (Keller, 1941). When shock is contingent on every nth response, relatively high rates of responding may occur immediately after shock (Hendry and Van Toller, 1964), though the appearance of high rates is not invariable and probably depends also on the schedule of reinforcement (Azrin, Holz, and Hake, 1963). A slightly higher rate for a brief period after shock may also occur with the conditioned emotional response (CER) procedure.…”