Abstract
Seventy-two Ss were tested in an escape/avoidance task in which omission of entertaining material served as the aversive stimulus event. Prior to these trials, Ss received 0, 15, or 30 escapable trials and either 0 or 100 inescapable trials with the same aversive stimulus. The results indicated that inescapable trials interfered with performance on the escape/avoidance task and that escapable trials negated the interference effect. The pretraining conditions more directly affected escape rather than avoidance performance.
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Research supported in part by USM Faculty Grant (No. 2576).
Article based on a thesis submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Southern Mississippi by the first author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the MA degree.
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Williams, R.L., Moffat, G.H. Escapable/inescapable pretraining and subsequent avoidance performance in human subjects. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 4, 144–146 (1974). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334225
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03334225