Four groups of rats (10 rats per group), composing an independent subjects design, were exposed to various amounts of escape training (escape contingent upon a fixed-ratio of 3 lever presses) and inescapable shook, prior to being tested on an escape task identical to the one on which they were trained. Interest was focused on the length of time required for, the number of, and the consistency of successful escapes as measures of disruption in responding. The High conditions consisted of 100 escape training trials and 200 seconds of inescapable shock while the Low conditions consisted of 5 escape training trials and 20 seconds of inescapable shock. The four possible combinations of the escape training and inescapable shock composed the four groups. A summary of the results indicated the production of learned helplessness (as measured by the amount of disruption) was not significantly effected by either the amount of escape pretraining or the amount of inescapable shook given the subjects.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2007. / Principal faculty advisor: Elaine B. Safer, Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Psychology, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND HUMANITIES. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 133-142. / by Bjorn Hellmut Merker. / Ph.D.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Canterbury, 2006. / Typescript (photocopy). Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-147). Also available via the World Wide Web.

This thesis compares and contrats the abnormal escapism of characters created by Eugene O'Neill, Henrich Ibsen, and Thomas Hardy.