Partial reinforcement and resistance to extinction in newts

Partial reinforcement of avoidance and resistance to extinction in humans.

In anxiety, maladaptive avoidance behavior provides for near-perfect controllability of potential threat. There has been little laboratory-based treatment research conducted on controllability as a contributing factor in the transition from adaptive to maladaptive avoidance. Here, we investigated for the first time whether partial reinforcement rate, or the reliability of avoidance at controlli...

Resistance to extinction, generalization decrement, and conditioned reinforcement.

This study investigated generalization decrement during an extinction resistance-to-change test for pigeon key pecking using a two-component multiple schedule with equal variable-interval 3-min schedules and different reinforcer amounts (one component presented 2-s access to reinforcement and the other 8s). After establishing baseline responding, subjects were assigned to one of the two extinct...

Effects of overtraining on extinction in newts (

Extinction after partial reinforcement: predicted vs. judged persistence.

The partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) (i.e., increased persistence following partial reward) is one of the most important generalizations from experimental studies of learning. Many theories of PREE assume that it involves cognitive and emotional mechanisms, but investigations of PREE have focused almost exclusively on behavioral measures. Four experiments with human adults investi...

A partial reinforcement extinction effect despite equal rates of reinforcement during Pavlovian conditioning.

In 4 experiments rats received appetitive Pavlovian conditioning followed by extinction. Food accompanied every trial with the conditioned stimulus (CS) for the continuously reinforced groups and only half of the trials for the partially reinforced groups. In contrast to previous experiments that have compared the effects of partial and continuous reinforcement, the rate at which food was deliv...