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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior logoLink to Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
. 1965 May;8(3):135–146. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1965.8-135

Stress-induced breakdown of an appetitive discrimination1

Eliot Hearst
PMCID: PMC1338380  PMID: 14302745

Abstract

Rats trained to discriminate between SD and SΔ for food reinforcement showed marked impairments in this discrimination when strong, unavoidable shocks occurred at the termination of a third stimulus. The predominant feature of this impairment was a supernormal rate of unreinforced (SΔ) behavior. Shocks delivered without exteroceptive warning also led to a discriminative breakdown. The effect was a direct function of shock intensity. When behavior was strongly suppressed in the third stimulus by response-correlated shock (“punishment”), instead of unavoidable shock, breakdowns were only temporary; as soon as responding recovered from its overall suppression, discriminative performance returned to normal. The discriminative deterioration may be interpreted as an emotional by-product of frequent aversive stimulation, but accidental contingencies could also have played a role.

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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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