The role of temporal discriminations in the reinforcement of Sidman avoidance behavior

Abstract

Animals learn to avoid with the Sidman procedure even though the avoidance response is not followed by the termination of any warning stimulus in the environment. What reinforces this response? The accepted explanation has been that the avoidance response is reinforced when it terminates other behavior that has become aversive by pairing with shock. However, the reinforcement may also be derived from the temporal discriminations that develop with Sidman avoidance. These and other temporal discriminations show that the animal has available some events that vary with the postresponse time. The shock will closely follow the temporal stimuli at long postresponse times and would be expected to make them aversive. The stimuli at short postresponse times would have a relatively low aversiveness due to their more remote relation to shock. Since the avoidance response changes a long postresponse time to a short one, that response would be followed by a decrease in aversiveness which would reinforce it. When sharp temporal discriminations are present, reinforcement from the decrease in aversiveness of temporal stimuli probably plays a dominant role in maintaining the avoidance response. This formulation fits the available data and has adequate answers for the objections that have been raised to earlier conceptions of the role temporal discriminations might play in Sidman avoidance. Although under some conditions the reinforcement in Sidman avoidance seems to be primarily due to the decrease in aversiveness of temporal stimuli, under other conditions there probably is reinforcement from the termination of conditioned aversive responses.