The effect of number and minimum duration of post-response-prevention escapes on the resistance to extinction of an avoidance response

Abstract

After one-way avoidance training, rats were exposed, during avoidance response prevention, to light (CS-only) presentations or to light-shock (CS-US) pairings. Subgroups were then given 1,5, or 10 trials during which they could escape immediately (unrestricted) or after 5 sec (restricted) by means of the previously conditioned avoidance response from a simultaneous light-shock compound. All animals were then exposed to avoidance extinction. The number of unrestricted escapes increased responding for CS-only animals, but had no significant effect on the performance of CS-US animals. Nevertheless, resistance to extinction was considerably less for CS-only animals given 10 unrestricted escapes than for CS-US animals given one unrestricted escape. One restricted escape had no more effect than one unrestricted escape for either response-prevention group. However, 5 restricted escapes elevated responding for CS-only animals to the level of CS-US animals. Extinction responding for CS-US animals increased significantly only after 10 restricted escapes. Since CS-only animals showed no further increase, resistance to extinction once more was greater for CS-US animals. These results, together with the very brief unrestricted escape latencies of CS-only animals, support a greater role for Pavlovian extinction than for response competition in the facilitation of avoidance extinction by CS-only response prevention. The fact that 10 restricted escapes were required to elevate resistance to extinction for CS-US animals over that obtained with one unrestricted escape attests to the effectiveness of Pavlovian conditioning during avoidance response prevention in elevating CS aversiveness to a near ceiling level.