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. 1977 May;27(3):407–418. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1977.27-407

Punishment of autoshaped key-peck responses of pigeons

Richard K Wesp, Kennon A Lattal, Alan D Poling
PMCID: PMC1333571  PMID: 16812003

Abstract

The effects of different voltages of response-dependent and response-independent electric shock on the frequency of key-peck responses engendered by an autoshaping procedure were studied. In Experiments I and II, each response produced a brief electric shock, and response frequency generally decreased more with higher-voltage shock. Preshock frequencies of responding were generally recovered across successive sessions of relatively low-voltage shock delivery but not at higher shock voltages. The effects of response-dependent and response-independent shock were compared in Experiment III by using a yoked-control procedure in which each pigeon received each type of shock delivery at different times. Response-dependent shock generally produced greater decreases in response frequency. In the final experiment, one response-independent shock per autoshaping trial was scheduled. The number of autoshaped responses per trial was related to shock voltages. These results suggest that response-dependent and response-independent electric shock effectively decrease frequency of autoshaped responses.

Keywords: punishment, response-dependent electric shock, response-independent electric shock, autoshaping, fixed-trial procedure, key peck, pigeons

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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