Abstract
Two experiments were performed to determine whether exposure to inescapable footshock would impair acquisition of difficult (FR 3 or higher) instrumental escape responses by rats. In the first experiment, rats received 250 trials of inescapable or escapable shock (mean duration: 7.7 sec/trial). In the second experiment, animals were exposed to durations of 5, 10, or 20 sec/trial of inescapable footshock. No evidence of an interference effect (helplessness) was observed, despite the use of conditions that should have detected this effect.
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I thank William Maki, Jerry Holzer, Eric Abraham, and Cathy Hill for excellent technical assistance.
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Beatty, W.W. Failure to observe learned helplessness in rats exposed to inescapable footshock. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 13, 272–273 (1979). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335080
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03335080