Traumatic avoidance learning: the outcomes of several extinction procedures with dogs.

Abstract

HE persistence of behavior with no obvious reinforcement poses special problems for theories of learning. But numerous experimental studies confirm the clinical observation that traumatically acquired habits maintain a marked resistance to extinction despite the lack of renewed primary reinforcement (3, 4, 6, 8). The generality of the problem has been indicated by Mowrer(9), who formulates as the central problem of neurosis the paradoxical perpetuation of nonadaptive behavior. The present research deals with the extinction of a habit acquired under the conditions of traumatic avoidance learning. The habit proved to be markedly resistant to the ordinary extinction procedure. However, extinction could be brought about through the use of special techniques. The obtained data suggested theoretical explanations of high resistance to extinction as well as explanations of the relative efficacy of the special techniques. We presume that die findings have a wide generality for theories of therapy and the nature of psychological trauma. The findings to be reported in this paper were obtained under the following conditions. Using a modification of the Mowrer-Miller shuttlebox, learned avoidance responses were established in normal mongrel dogs. Under the impetus of very intense (just subtetanizing) electric shock, the dogs were trained to jump over a barrier from one compartment to the other in order to avoid the shock. The details of the training procedure are given in another paper (13). Ten trials comprised each day's session. After the animals had met an acquisition criterion of 10 successive responses on a given day, different dogs were