For experiments investigated the effect of adding noncontingent (free) food to an operant contingency during random ratio (RR) and random interval (RI) training and during extinction in rats. Free food was presented during extinction of RI responding in Experiments 1 and 2. Noncontigent food retarded response loss compared to a signaled free food group (Experiments 1 and 2) which declined less rapidly than a control group of no free food (Experiment 1). Free food was presented while the instrumental reinforcement RR and RI probabilities remained unchanged in Experiments and 3 and 4. In contrast to Experiments 1 and 2, added noncontingent food facilitated response loss compared to a signaled condition and to a control group of no added free food which responded most (Experiment 3). Removing all food caused most recovery in the free food group, less in the signaled condition and least in the control group (Experiments 1 and 3). A generalization decrement hypothesis of the free food effect was offered to explain these apparently paradoxical results.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.56637 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | Géczy, István |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Science (Department of Psychology.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001318573, proquestno: AAIMM80410, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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