Resistance to extinction in the developing chick: Effects of punishment and preextinction training

Abstract

The effect of punishment and amount of acquisition training on resistance to extinction of keypecking was determined in 1-and 4-day-old Vantress x Arbor Acre chicks. Socially reared 1-and 4-day·old chicks (N=96) were first autoshaped to keypeck for heat reward and then given an additional 12 or 84 acquisition trials before extinction testing. The extinction responses of one-half of the chicks of each age were also punished with wing shocks. Major findings were as follows: (1) When only 12 acquisition trials preceded extinction testing, t-day-old chicks were less resistant to extinction than 4-day-old chicks under nonpunishment conditions, but they were more resistant to extinction than 4·day-old chicks under punishment conditions, (2) when 84 acquisition trials preceded extinction testing, 1-and 4-day-old chicks did not significantly differ in resistance to extinction under either the punishment or nonpunlshment condition, and (3) punishment produced a decrease in the extinction responding of 4~day-old chicks following both 12 and 84 acquisition trials, but punishment produced a decrease in the extinction responding of l-day-old chicks only when 84 acquisition trials preceded extinction testing. These results suggest that the l-day-old chick, as compared to the 4-day-oldchick, may be deficient in associative, rather than inhibitive, ability.The age dependency of both key peck and approach passive avoidance (PA) learning of the young chick was found recently to be related specifically to the number of reinforced acquisition trials given before punishment is introduced (Mattingly & Zolman , 1980). As in previous PA studies with chicks (e.g., Brown, 1976Brown, ,1977, l-day-old chicks suppressed responding significantly less than 4-day-old chicks when tested for PA learning after minimal prepunishment training. But when given extensive prepunishment training , both 1-and 4-day·old chicks learned quickly to stop responding when punished , and no significant age differences in PA learning were observed.In these PA tests , separate groups of chicks were given either immediate or delayed response-contingent punishment. As expected , for 4-day-old chicks, delayed punishment resulted in less response suppression than did immediate punishment, regardless of the amount of prepunishment training. For I-day-old chicks , however , delayed punishment produced less response suppression than did immediate punishment only after extensive prepunishment training. The absence of a delay-ofpunishment effect for I-day-old chicks after minimal prepunishment training indicated that these chicks did not learn the appropriate stimulus-and responsepunishment contingencies during PA testing , and it suggested that the inferior PA performance of I-day-old chicks , as compared to 4-day-old chicks , was because of an associative deficiency. Increasing the amount of prepunishment train ing was assumed , therefore , to increase the l -day-old chicks' sensitivity to the appropriate stimulus-and response-shock contingencies to a level comparable to...

Effects of apomorphine and haloperidol on response suppression learning of young chicks.

“…Although enhancement of dopamine receptor activity retarded response suppression learning of the 4-day-old chick, it is evident that functional changes in central dopaminergic mechanisms are not primarily responsible for the normal age-dependent improvement in response suppression learning of the young chick. During extinction testing, punishment decreased the percentage of response trials of 4-day-old apomorphine-treated chicks (Experiment 4), whereas punishment increased the percentage of response trials of normal 1-day-old chicks (Mattingly & Zolman, 1982).…”

“…As mentioned previously, normal 1-day-old chicks, besides being slower than normal 4-day-old chicks in learning to withhold responses that are both rewarded and punished, make significantly more responses during extinction when their nonrewarded responses are punished than when not punished. In contrast, normal 4-day-old chicks make significantly fewer responses during extinction when their nonrewarded responses are punished than when not punished (Mattingly & Zolman, 1982). The purpose of Experiment 4, therefore, was to determine whether the performance of the apomorphine-treated 4-day-old chicks would be like that of the normal 1-day-old chicks during key-peck extinction testing under both punishment and nonpunishment conditions.…”

“…Essentially, after brief reward training, 1-day-old chicks suppress their key pecking significantly less than 4-day-old chicks when rewarded responses are punished and make significantly more responses during extinction when their nonrewarded responses are punished than when not punished. In contrast to this paradoxical punishment-induced increase in extinction responding of 1-day-old chicks, 4-day-old chicks show the more typical suppressive effect of punishment during extinction (Mattingly & Zolman, 1982). Consequently, before a functional change in any brain neurotransmitter can be assumed to be primarily responsible for the age-dependent improvement in response suppression of the young chick, certain behavioral criteria must be met.…”