The Avoidance Learning Problem

The first avoidance learning experiment outside the finger withdrawal tradition involved rats, which were trained in a shuttlebox with a brief l-second CS and different interstimulus intervals of 0, 10, 20, or 30 seconds.

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the avoidance learning problem. The first form the problem of avoidance learning took was quite unrecognizable. A human S's finger was placed on a metal electrode and after a 2-second conditioned stimulus (CS), or warning stimulus, electricity from an inductorium is applied. The unconditioned response (US) is finger withdrawal. After just a few trials, the finger also withdraws to the CS, prior to the onset of shock. As the CS comes to elicit the response originally elicited by the US, the learning looks like classical conditioning. The first avoidance learning experiment outside the finger withdrawal tradition involved rats, which were trained in a shuttlebox with a brief l-second CS and different interstimulus intervals of 0, 10, 20, or 30 seconds. Shock was withheld if the rat jumped over the hurdle in the shuttlebox during the interstimulus interval. The avoidance contingency in this study was not new, because it had become an accustomed part of the finger-withdrawal studies.