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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior logoLink to Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
. 1970 Jan;13(1):41–50. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1970.13-41

DRL escape: effects of minimum duration and intensity of electric shock1

Perrin S Cohen
PMCID: PMC1333654  PMID: 16811426

Abstract

Three dogs were exposed to a DRL-escape procedure that required them to endure a minimum duration of electric shock without responding in order for a response to terminate that shock. When this minimum duration increased from 0 to either 2.25 or 7.00 sec, response latencies increased proportionately. With the minimum duration held constant at 2.25 sec, a gradual increase in shock intensity to 5.0 ma had no systematic effect upon latencies. Even under the highest shock intensity, 5.0 ma, latency and interresponse-time distributions were unimodal with very few latencies and interresponse times less than the minimum duration. Three additional dogs were exposed to an escape procedure in which every response was immediately reinforced. For these subjects, the same increase in shock intensity to 5.0 ma was accompanied by a decrease in latencies. The precise temporal spacing of responses obtained with the DRL-escape procedure may in part be due to the fact that every response latency and interresponse time that did not meet the minimum duration was not only extinguished but was also punished.

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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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