Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

1976

Keywords

Goldfish, Behavior, Reinforcement (Psychology)

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Stanley R. Scobie

Second Advisor

William C. Gordon

Third Advisor

Norman E. Spear

Series

Social Sciences

Abstract

Single alternation behavior was studied in a Pavlovian aversive shuttle response situation with goldfish. Pronounced patterning, equivalent to groups receiving concurrent trial discriminative cues, was observed in groups receiving a relatively short interval between reinforced and non-reinforced trials and a relatively long interval between non-reinforced and reinforced trials. Groups presented with the reversed temporal information between alternated trials and groups receiving fixed intervals between all trials showed patterning performance to a lesser degree. Following a failure to replicate the fixed interval patterning condition, attempts were made to reinstate alternation performance by increasing reinforcement magnitude and by giving extended training, but with little success. Although it was determined that neither a sensory aftereffects trace hypothesis nor a memorial representation hypothesis could exclusively account for the present results, the observation of response facilitatory aftereffects of shock presentations within groups receiving random reinforcement schedules, favored the acceptance of a peripheral trace notion as the most parsimonious explanation of the data.

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