Novelty, arousal, and the reinforcement of diversive exploration in the rat.
- 1 January 1966
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology
- Vol. 62 (2) , 222-226
- https://doi.org/10.1037/h0023681
Abstract
In 1 experiment, training sessions, during which a bar press resulted in either a novel or a familiar light change or buzzer sound, and test sessions, during which no reinforcing stimulus was given, occurred on alternate days. For rats maintained in a noisy room, novel stimuli were more rewarding than familiar stimuli, but the opposite was true for rats maintained in a quiet room. It is suggested that reward value is an inverted U-shaped function of arousal value, which increases with the novelty of the stimulus and the arousal level of Sfsubject]. This suggestion was corroborated by the results of a 2nd experiment, with methamphetamine injections used to raise arousal.This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Some Methodological Factors about Light in Animal ResearchPerceptual and Motor Skills, 1965