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Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior logoLink to Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior
. 1964 Mar;7(2):129–133. doi: 10.1901/jeab.1964.7-129

Stimulus control of avoidance behavior1

Roger E Ulrich, William C Holz, Nathan H Azrin
PMCID: PMC1404319  PMID: 14130087

Abstract

The introduction of a warning signal preceding shocks greatly increased the effectiveness of avoidance responding. Periods of “warm-up” at the beginning of the session were eliminated, and the number of shocks received by the subjects was greatly reduced. With response-shock interval constant, response rate increased as the interval between the response and the onset of the warning signal was shortened. The response tended to occur shortly after the onset of the warning signal regardless of the duration of these “safe” periods. A greatly elevated response rate was maintained even when the duration of the safe period was reduced to 0.3 sec. Thus, the pre-shock signal obtained nearly exclusive control of the responding and overrode the usual “temporal discrimination” of the response-shock interval.

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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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