Source
Anne Shemer and Joram Feldon (1984). Long-term partial reinforcement extinction effect and long-term partial punishment effect in a one-trial-a-day paradigm. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society. 22(3), 221–224.
Research article: experiments with rats. Original publication · Read the source PDF.
The experiments used rats. The journal issue is from 1984; 2013 is the later online publication date.
Authors’ abstract
Two experiments were run to demonstrate the presence of a partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE) and a partial punishment effect (PPE) 4 weeks after training in a 1-trial/day procedure. In the PREE paradigm, two groups of animals were trained to run a straight alley for food reward; one group was rewarded on every trial (CRF), whereas the other was rewarded on only 50% of the trials (PRF). In the test phase, extinction, no reward was present on any trial. Four weeks after the end of acquisition, and subsequent to 7 days of CRF retraining, PRF animals showed greater resistance to extinction than did their CRF controls. The PPE paradigm resembled the PREE paradigm in all aspects, except that mild electric footshock, together with the food reward, was used instead of nonreward on 50% of the acquisition trials. In the test phase, all animals were shocked and given a food reward on every trial. Four weeks after the end of acquisition and retraining, the animals with previous experience of shock in acquisition showed greater resistance to punishment than did their controls.
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