Over 80% of the mother rats in this study retrieved their own appendages (i.e. tails and paws), as well as their pups, during the first five post partum days. Such behaviors should not be considered abnormal although this is implied in some of the literature.
In a Sherif type social convergence design five groups of Ss received 0, 3, 10, 20 and 40 reinforcements in Session 1. In Session 2 S and a collaborator whose responses differed by 8 in from the Ss’ average in Session 1 responded together. The amount of response change from Session 1 to Session 2 was inversely related to number of reinforcements in Session 1.
Maze learning efficiency was measured under verbal and motor learning modes and single and double maze conditions to investigate additivity of response produced cues. The results indicated that an additivity of response produced cues assumption would not accountfor superiority of verbal mode maze learners.
Mandler and Earhard argue that supposed mediational Bffects may be attributed to differential interference Ln experimental and control paradigms employed. They present an experiment to support their contention. However, a crucial assumption is unsupported; the experiment is weakened by failure to include a mediational group; their data are subject to other interpretations; and...
Right ear preference in terms of percentage correct and number of ear orders was demonstrated in a dichotic listening context using noun pairs matched for initial phonemes. Ear order effects were markedly reduced as compared with previous results. The superiority of right over left ear was found in both immediate and delayed orders of reporting.Concrete words were reported more...
Rats were given a food pellet every 60 sec., not contingent on operant responding. All rats developed over days a pattern of prolonged water drinking following delivery of food pellets. One of the rats, whose operant-level lever pressing was recorded concurrently with licking, developed a complex pattern of drinking and bar pressing which persisted even after a 5-sec. delay of...
Latencies in paired-associate learning were examined for 10 trials beginning after the last error on an individual pair. Latencies decreased over the first eight of these trials, the largest decrease occurring from the first to the second trial after the last error.
Concrete and abstract nouns differing in rated capacity to evoke imagery served as the common elements in a stimulus equivalence mediation paradigm. The mediation test items were nonsense syllables. Significant mediation effects were obtained in 2 experiments o Relative to control Ss, the concrete mediation group was superior to the abstract in rate of learning over mediation...
The effects of changes in incentive conditions were examined in a three-choice, probability learning task. After 160 trials two groups of 10 Ss each were switched from low to high incentive conditions (No Payoffs to Payoffs) or vice versa, while two control groups of 10 Ss each performed under either low or high incentive conditions throughout. The switch from high to low...
The hypothesis that the depression effect is produced by increased emotionality resulting from a downward shift in reward was tested by studying the effects of a downward shift in reward in control animals and animals under the influence of chlorpromazine. Differences between control and drug groups appeared only in the preshift data, the depression effect appearing in both...
During adaptation to prismatic displacement, there are systematic changes in visual localization, in auditory localization, and in subjective straight ahead. The change in auditory localization is associated with the change in straight ahead rather than with the change in visual localization.
An experiment involving rats in a runway, inter-trial reinforcement and three successive acquisition-extinction sequences substantiated and extended earlier findings that intertriai reinforcement diminished the partial reinforcement effect following a small number of acquisition trials, but not after extensive training.
In twenty nonreinforced binary choices, adolescent retardates, normal children, and college students gave no more alternations when instructed to respond randomly than when instructed to respond with a simple pattern. These results imply that alternation above chance is due to something other than preconceptions about the nature of random sequences.
Sixteen albino rats learned to run a straight alley after 10-1/2, 22-1/2, 34-1/2, and 46-1/2 hr. of food deprivation. The order of these deprivation periods for a given animal was randomized over successive trials. After 12 acquisition trials, Ss were randomly assigned to either a 10-1/2 or 46-1/2 extinction group. Results showed no significant effect of deprivation level on...
Nursery school children traced a series of T-mazes under varying and nonvarying stimulus conditions in a situation arranged such that all external stimulus cues could be apprehended by Ss throughout the entire task. The results of the experiment were interpreted on the basis of Berlyne’s (1960) novelty hypothesis, and it was concluded that spontaneous alternation appeared to be...
This experiment provides evidence that the order in which parts of a form are scanned changes in the preschool period. Geometric forms were constructed to have focal and distinguishing features, and the forms were presented tachistoscopically in two orientations. Recognition was enhanced in 3-yr.-old Ss when the form was oriented with the focal part at the top and the...
In three experiments, normally reared hooded rats were exposed to a T maze with the same black-white pattern in each arm and were later tested with the pattern in one arm changed. Half the Ss received food for entering the unchanged arm and half for entering the changed arm. In all three experiments there was a significant difference between the groups in terms of number of food...
Interstimulus intervals permitting backward masking of a disk by a ring were studied as a function of chronological and mental age. A significant decrease in interstimulus masking intervals as age (7–10 years) increased was found, supporting the conclusion that figurai masking is a Type I perceptual phenomenon.
The growth of incentive motivation was investigated in a two choice discrimination using three groups of 10 Ss for 300 trials. The experimental group was trained with 20 mg and 97 mg rewards. One control group received 20 mg while the other control received 97 mg on all trials. Asymptotic running speed was not achieved, but the converging speeds of the control groups tended to...
Thirteen cats with bilateral septal lesions were tested on a passive-avoidance task and also tested for retention of a preoperatively learned active-avoidance habit. Deficits in passive-avoidance behavior and losses in retention were produced by septal damage. There was no consistent relationship between the occurrence of the two abnormalities in the operated Ss.
A stimulus whose onset, duration, and intensity are easily controlled, dilute citric acid, was proposed as a punishing stimulus for children. Results were reported which showed the punitive effect of dilute citric acid for a rewarded response in children.
Two groups of planaria regenerated from heads or tails were subdivided into groups in which CS and UCS were either paired or non-paired. After 120 presentations of CS and UCS the animals were subjected to amino acid analysis. Significant behavioral differences were found, but biochemical-behavioral correlations were not significant.
Two rats were given food every 90 sec. Both developed polydipsia. When the empty pellet dispenser operated every 90 sec., drinking gradually declined, remained below normal in a succeeding reinforcement session, and recovered to normal the next day.
Twenty-four rats with bilateral hippocampal lesions and 24 intact controls were trained for 12 trials in a Lashley III maze. Half of each group had a 10 sec. intertriai interval and the other half a 10 min. intertrial interval. Results indicated a highly significant lesion effect and a tendency for the hippocampectomized Ss to perform better under the more distributed condition.
Two groups of children, a 5-year-old and a 10-year-old group, were run in a short-term memory experiment designed to determine the effect of presentation rate on retention. The results indicate that longer presentation intervals improve recall of recently presented items while shorter presentation intervals improve recall of early items.