Frustration effect and resistance to extinction as a function of percentage of reinforcement.

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Abstract
Following 96 continuously reinforced acquisition trials in a double runway situation, 30 male albino rats were reinforced in the 1st goal box on either 25, 50, or 75% of the trials. All 3 groups revealed the typical frustration effect (FE), i.e., they ran faster in the 2nd alley following nonreward than following reward. The magnitude of this effect was an inverted U shaped function of the percentage of reinforcement, with the 50% group showing the greatest FE. A 2nd experiment with 60 male albino rats compared resistance to extinction with the FE. Both showed an inverted U shaped function to percentage of reinforcement, and the correlation between these 2 measures was .95. This suggests that animals that show the most vigorous response to nonreward, as measured by the FE, are more likely to show persistence effects when all reward has been withdrawn. (16 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

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