Negative automaintenance omission training is effective.
Twelve pigeons were exposed to negative automaintenance contingencies for 17-27 sessions immediately after brief (14-16 sessions) or extended (168-237 sessions) exposure to positive automaintenance contingencies, or after 4-10 sessions of instrumental training. In all conditions, negative automaintenance contingencies virtually eliminated responding, reducing response rates to an average 1.3 responses per min. This reduction in response rate was validated by a model of transition between early and late response rates that assumed exponential transition of rates from one set of contingencies to the next. The model faithfully reproduced cumulative records, and yielded estimates of terminal rates under negative automaintenance that were close to operant level.
Sanabria
Federico
F
Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe 85287-1104, USA. Federico.Sanabria@asu.edu
Sitomer
Matthew T
MT
Killeen
Peter R
PR
D000818:Animals; D001070:Appetitive Behavior; D001245:Association Learning; D001288:Attention; D010856:Columbidae; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D011939:Mental Recall; D009042:Motivation