Note to users. If you're seeing this message, it means that your browser cannot find this page's style/presentation instructions -- or possibly that you are using a browser that does not support current Web standards. Find out more about why this message is appearing, and what you can do to make your experience of our site the best it can be.

Science 5 March 1971:
Vol. 171. no. 3974, pp. 923 - 925
DOI: 10.1126/science.171.3974.923
Prev | Table of Contents | Next

Articles

Classical Conditioning of a Complex Skeletal Response

Elkan Gamzu 1 and David R. Williams 1

1 Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 19104

The pigeon's so-called "arbitrary" response of pecking an illuminated disk can be established and maintained by procedures resembling those of classical conditioning. This phenomenon was shown to be independent of the specific signaling relationships between illumination of the pecking disk and presentation of food; it will appear as long as the key is differentially associated with food. When a nondifferential condition is introduced, pecking "extinguishes" even if it has previously been established and even when the new condition involves as much reinforcement as the old one. Reinstating differential conditions reestablishes pecking. The initial conditions determine the speed and apparently the asymptote of pecking rates in the differential condition; initial exposure to a nondifferential procedure retards subsequent acquisition, possibly quite permanently. These findings are discussed in the context of mechanisms of adaptive learning, not involving reward and punishment, which lead to selection of effective behaviors on a nonarbitrary basis.


THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Behavioral competition: a mechanism for schedule interactions.
J. Hinson and J. Staddon (1978)
Science 202, 432-434
   Abstract »    PDF »
Retardation of Autoshaping: Control by Contextual Stimuli.
A. TOMIE (1976)
Science 192, 1244-1246
   Abstract »    PDF »
Errorless Discrimination, Autoshaping, and Conditioned Inhibition.
M. G. Wessells (1973)
Science 182, 941-943
   Abstract »    PDF »
Pavlovian Conditioning with Heat Reinforcement Produces Stimulus-Directed Pecking in Chicks.
E. A. Wasserman (1973)
Science 181, 875-877
   Abstract »    PDF »
Pitfalls of Organismic Concepts: "Learned Laziness"?.
E. R. Gamzu, D. R. Williams, B. Schwartz, R. L. Welker, G. Hansen, L. A. Engberg, and D. R. Thomas (1973)
Science 181, 367-369
   PDF »
Acquisition of Key-Pecking via Autoshaping as a Function of Prior Experience: "Learned Laziness"?.
L. A. Engberg, G. Hansen, R. L. Welker, and D. R. Thomas (1972)
Science 178, 1002-1004
   Abstract »    PDF »


To Advertise     Find Products

Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)