Date of Award

4-1971

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Dr. Roger E. Ulrich

Access Setting

Masters Thesis-Open Access

Abstract

Five children has the opportunity at programmed intervals to shock a rat during daily 10 min sessions. An aggression response was defined as producing rat shock and reinforcement was not made contingent on any response within the experimental chamber. Response increment occurred for all subjects upon introduction of a visual cue which signaled shock period onset. A discrimination between shock and no-shock periods developed for all subjects and response increment occurred for all subjects due to a change in the manipulanda. Two subjects who initially preferred shocking the rat, also produced visual feedback when available, although average shock rate was maintained during these periods. Subjects initially preferring to not produce shock tended to do so following the withdrawal and re-introduction of visual and auditory stimulus effects produced by the rat when shocked. The production of rat-shock was shown to be neither due to position preference nor cue onset alone. Any programmed stimulus change affected subjects' performance.

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