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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior logoLink to Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
. 1966 Sep;9(5):557–565. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1966.9-557

Human, free-operant avoidance of “time out” from monetary reinforcement1

Alan Baron, Arnold Kaufman
PMCID: PMC1338214  PMID: 5964512

Abstract

To assess the aversive effects of withdrawing monetary reinforcement, human subjects were exposed to a free-operant avoidance procedure in which periods of no reinforcement occurred if the subject failed to respond, and each response postponed withdrawal of reinforcement. Avoidance behavior was developed either through specific instructions about the consequence of responding or through preliminary escape-avoidance training. In all cases, rates of response were found to be a positively accelerated function of decreases in the duration by which responding postponed reinforcement withdrawal. The findings with respect to the function relating avoidance behavior to the interval of postponement were viewed as similar to those obtained when shock is used as the aversive event in free-operant avoidance conditioning.

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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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