Discrimination performance as affected by problem difficulty and shock for either the correct or incorrect response.

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Abstract
To assess one interpretation of the paradoxical facilitating effect of shock for the correct response, 12 groups of 8 hungry rats each received visual-discrimination training for food under no-shock, shock-right, and shock-wrong conditions and 4 levels of problem difficulty. Difficulty was manipulated by varying the relative brightnesses of the discriminanda. Performance was progressively retarded with increasing levels of difficulty. However, with the more difficult discriminations, performance relative to that of the no-shock Ss was facilitated by the shock-right condition and more so by the shock-wrong condition. It is suggested that shock may have both an avoidance and cue function, the latter presumably providing the basis for the finding, obtained for the 1st time in the laboratory, that shock for the correct response facilitates performance.