Yoshino, Toshihiko; (1998) Choice behaviour of rats under tone-punishment. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

The thesis explored choice behaviour of rats under punishment by a loud auditory tone. Eight experiments in the first half of the thesis found and proved that the loud auditory stimulus can be used as a positive punisher in an operant experiment using rats as subjects. These experiments also found that the leaner reinforcement schedule or the shorter length of tone employed, the greater the suppressive effect of the tone obtained. It was discussed that these effects may be more easily detected using a single-subject or within-subjects design than employing a between-subjects design. The second half investigated effects of two factors on choice behaviour; deprivation level and type of economy. Deprivation level did not clearly affect behaviour suppression or preference shift caused by the addition of tone-punishment schedule over a reinforcement-only condition. The type of economy, a closed economy and an open economy, generated critical differences in choice behaviour in three aspects. First, a closed economy attenuated the suppressive effect of tone-punishment. Second, a closed economy generated the higher sensitivity to reinforcer allocation for both response and time allocations than an open economy did. Third, under an open economy, the sensitivity to reinforcer allocation for time allocation was higher than that for response allocation; on the contrary, under a closed economy, the sensitivity to reinforcer allocation for response allocation was higher than that for time allocation. Regardless the type of economy, tone-punishment produced the preference shift towards overmatching. Considering a mathematical solution for a parameter of the two models of punishment, it was argued that the additive model of punishment predicts and describes choice behaviour more appropriately than the subtractive model of punishment. It was also discussed that time allocation may be the more fundamental process of choice behaviour than response allocation.

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