Aversive Conditioning and Learning

1st Edition - January 1, 1971
Editor: F. Robert Brush
Language: English
eBook ISBN:
9 7 8 - 1 - 4 8 3 2 - 6 1 1 4 - 0

Aversive Conditioning and Learning covers the significant advances in establishing the phenomena, principles, and other aspects of aversive conditioning and learning. This book… Read more

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Aversive Conditioning and Learning covers the significant advances in establishing the phenomena, principles, and other aspects of aversive conditioning and learning. This book is organized into three sections encompassing nine chapters. The first section deals with operant and classical conditioning of responses of the autonomic nervous system and with behavioral measurement of conditioned fear. The next section discusses the mechanism of avoidance learning and a number of problem areas, including the effects of response selection on the ease of acquisition and the nature and slow time course of the processes that reinforce avoidance learning. Other problems explore are the influence on avoidance learning of prior experience with uncontrollable shock and with reliable and unreliable predictors of shock, an analysis of avoidance learning in terms of a Markov model of short- and long-term memory, and the nature of retention of conditioned fear and the possible hormonal mechanisms that control performance motivated by fear. The last section examines some of the unexpected effects of punishment, which usually produces suppression of behavior. This section emphasizes the effects of noncontingent aversive stimuli that may account for the suppressive effects of punishment and on the paradoxical facilitation of behavior that sometimes results from response-contingent shock. This book will prove useful to medical psychologists, psychiatrists, and workers in the related fields.

List of Contributors

Preface

Aversive Conditioning

1. Autonomic Aversive Conditioning in Infrahuman Subjects

I. Introduction

II. Background

III. Operant Autonomic Conditioning

IV. Classical Conditioning of Autonomic Responses

V. The Comparison of Classical and Operant Conditioning

VI. Autonomic Changes during the Operant Conditioning of Skeletal Responses

VII. Conclusion

References

2. Behavioral Measurement of Conditioned Fear

I. Introduction: The Conditioning, Measurement, and Definition of Fear

II. Variables Influencing the Conditioning and the Measurement of Fear

III. Extinction Phenomena

IV. Similarity of Fear and Frustration

V. Summary and Some Implications

References

Avoidance Learning

3. Species-Specific Defense Reactions

I. Introduction

II. Avoidance Studies

III. Acquired Drive Studies

IV. The CS-Termination Contingency

V. What is Left?

References

4. Relaxation Theory and Experiments

I. The Theory in General

II. Experiments

III. Conditioned Relaxation

IV. Summary of Experiments

References

5. Mathematical Models for Aversive Conditioning

I. Preliminary Considerations

II. The Two-Operator Linear Model

III. Discrete Performance Level Markov Model

IV. General Markov Model

V. Response Latency

VI. Choice Reversal under Aversive Stimulation

VII. Conclusions

References

6. Unpredictable and Uncontrollable Aversive Events

I. Definition of "Prediction" and of "Control"

II. Uncontrollable Aversive Events

III. Unpredictable Shocks

IV. General Summary

References

7. Retention of Aversively Motivated Behavior

I. The Defining Experiment

II. Requisite Antecedent Conditions

III. Determinants of the Interval of Minimum Retention

IV. The Problem of Stimulus Generalization

V. Nonassociative Manipulations of the U-Shaped Retention Function

VI. The Search for the Events that Mediate the U-Shaped Retention Function

VII. Conclusion

References

Problems of Punishment

8. Some Effects of Noncontingent Aversive Stimulation

I. Introduction

II. Responses Elicited by Aversive Stimulation

III. Effects of Aversive Stimulation on Ongoing Behavior

IV. Noncontingent Aversive Stimulation and the Suppressive Effects of Punishment

References

9. Suppression and Facilitation by Response Contingent Shock

I. Introduction to the Study of Punishment

II. Stimulus (Cue) Properties of Punishment

III. Response Eliciting Properties of Punishment

IV. The Nature of Punishment: Summary and Interpretation

References

Author Index

Subject Index