Resistance to punishment and extinction following training with shock or nonreinforcement.

Abstract

Three groups of 30 rats were trained in a simple runway. During acquisition Group N was exposed to nonreinforcement on a 50% reward schedule, Group P was exposed to gradually increasing punishment along with consistent food reward, while Group C was never punished or nonreinforced. Half of each group was then tested for the decremental effects of either consistent nonreinforcement or consistent strong punishment. Group P and N Ss were more resistant than Group C Ss not only to the decremental variable with which they had been trained, i. e., punishment or nonreinforcement, respectively, but also to the alternate test variable. The results were interpreted in support of a commonality between the emotional consequences of punishment and nonreinforcement.