Effect of a secondary reinforcing agent in black-white discrimination.
- 1 January 1949
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Psychological Association (APA) in Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology
- Vol. 42 (1) , 1-5
- https://doi.org/10.1037/h0053533
Abstract
Rats initially trained to eat from a particular type of glass food-dish in gray food boxes learned to discriminate between a white alley and a black one more readily when the negative (black) food box did not contain the empty food-dish of the preliminary training than did a litter-mate control group (12 animals in each group) prepared and tested by identical procedures except that the negative food box contained the empty food-dish. The results are interpreted in terms of Spence''s theory of discrimination learning which states that which one of a set of alternative responses is made in a choice situation depends on the relative strengths of the various response tendencies, which in turn depend on differential frequencies of association with a "reinforcing state of affairs.".Keywords
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