The temporal distribution of avoidance responses.

Abstract

With rats and cats, an avoidance conditioning technique was employed in which every lever press delayed a shock for a specified time interval. There was no warning signal to indicate an approaching shock. Frequency distributions of time intervals between successive responses indicated clearly that avoidance conditioning in this situation is not a product of time discrimination. Responses were distributed randomly or near randomly in time, with two types of commonly observed deviations from random responding noted. Theoretical significance of the data is discussed.