Facilitation of bar-press avoidance by handling during the intertrial interval.
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
The results of Experiment 2 provided evidence against bar holding and CS discriminability explanations of poor bar-press avoidance, while supporting the idea that conditioned freezing responses interfere with bar pressing.
Abstract
Experiment 1 demonstrated that handling rats prior to the start of a trial greatly facilitated bar-press avoidance learning. Although Ss which were also allowed to escape the training chamber following a bar press performed well, they were not significantly better than those Ss receiving handling only. Experiment 2, using concomitant measures of freezing and bar holding, investigated the effect of the interval between handling and the start of a trial. The resulting analysis provided evidence against bar holding and CS discriminability explanations of poor bar-press avoidance, while supporting the idea that conditioned freezing responses interfere with bar pressing.