The acquisition, extinction, and spontaneous recovery of a conditioned operant response.

Abstract

Curves are presented for acquisiton, extinction and spontaneous recovery of a conditioned operant response. The measure of response is the latency in leaving an entrance-box to traverse a runway to food. Latency decreases with an increase in the number of trials in acquisition and with time after extinction in spontaneous recovery. It increases with number of trials in extinction. An hypothesis for the 3 processes is presented.