Evidence for frustration during discrimination learning.

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Abstract
Assigned 120 male Sprague-Dawley rats to 8 groups receiving 30 or 60 runway trials of (a) discrimination training, (b) partial reinforcement, (c) continuous reinforcement, or (d) 0 reinforcement. Ss were then given hurdle jump training. Groups a, b, and c did not differ from each other in speed of hurdle jumping, and the number of runway acquisition trials did not influence hurdle-jump performance. All of these groups learned to jump the hurdle faster than Group d. A 2nd experiment with 128 male Holtzman rats demonstrated hurdle-jump acquisition after 24 or 96 discrimination learning trials and showed that groups given discrimination training to a large vs. small reward, rather than a large vs. no reward, also learned to jump the hurdle to escape from the stimuli paired with the small reward. Results provide evidence for A. Amsel's (see record) frustration analysis of discrimination learning. (18 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)

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