Response patterning in goldfish: single alternation in a Pavlovian aversive paradigm

<p>Single alternation behavior was studied in a Pavlovian aversive shuttle response situation with goldfish. Pronounced patterning, equivalent to groups receiving concurrent trial discriminative cues, was observed in groups receiving a relatively short interval between reinforced and non-reinforced trials and a relatively long interval between non-reinforced and reinforced trials. Groups presented with the reversed temporal information between alternated trials and groups receiving fixed intervals between all trials showed patterning performance to a lesser degree. Following a failure to replicate the fixed interval patterning condition, attempts were made to reinstate alternation performance by increasing reinforcement magnitude and by giving extended training, but with little success. Although it was determined that neither a sensory aftereffects trace hypothesis nor a memorial representation hypothesis could exclusively account for the present results, the observation of response facilitatory aftereffects of shock presentations within groups receiving random reinforcement schedules, favored the acceptance of a peripheral trace notion as the most parsimonious explanation of the data.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year

1976

Author dc:creator

• Wallace, Julia E

Contributors dc:contributor

• Stanley R. Scobie
• William C. Gordon
• Norman E. Spear

• Goldfish
• Behavior
• Reinforcement (Psychology)

Repository record dc:identifier

https://orb.binghamton.edu/dissertation_and_theses/424

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:orb.binghamton.edu:dissertation_and_theses-1429