PUNISHMENT BY NOISE IN AN ALTERNATIVE RESPONSE SITUATION.
Operant responses of human subjects were conditioned according to a variable-interval schedule of positive reinforcement. A brief noise was delivered as punishment for each of the responses. The noise suppressed the punished responses more when an alternative unpunished response was concurrently available than when only a single punished response was available. This finding extends the generality of a previous study that had used a period of extinction rather than the brief noise as the punishing stimulus.
D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D003657:Decision Making; D005108:Extinction, Psychological; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders; D009622:Noise; D011678:Punishment; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology
CONDITIONING (PSYCHOLOGY); DECISION MAKING; EXTINCTION (PSYCHOLOGY); MENTAL DISORDERS; NOISE; PUNISHMENT; REINFORCEMENT (PSYCHOLOGY)