The facilitation of experimental extinction by response prevention as a function of the acquisition of a new response.

Abstract

The purpose was to clarify the process by which albino rats, prevented from making an avoidance response early in extinction trials, extinguish more rapidly than those treated in a traditional manner. It was demonstrated that when the avoidance chamber was treated as a goal box, latencies were significantly greater for animals whose avoidance responses had been interrupted early in the extinction of previous avoidance training than for a group which had been extinguished in a normal fashion and a control group of naive Ss. These findings were interpreted to suggest that more rapid extinction following response interruption results from the acquisition of a new response which competes with avoidance running.