Effects of Incentive and Frustrative Cues on Acquisition of an Alleyway-Running Response in Rats

Abstract

The motivational properties of Longstreth's (1970) definitions of incentive and frustrative cues were tested using 32 rats in a two-phase straight-alleyway experiment. During pretraining rats given an incentive cue were presented a visual cue prior to reinforcement; rats given a frustrative cue experienced the visual cue simultaneously with reinforcement. Each animal subsequently encountered the same cue in mid-alley during 40 CRF training trials. Significant inhibition and not a frustration effect developed as the rats given the frustrative cue passed through the cue and postcue segment of the alley. Significant incentive effects occurred midway through training only in the postcue segment. Differential resistance to extinction was not found. The results do not support all of Longstreth's assumed properties of motivational cues and in addition suggest that performance differences attributable to the cues are delayed by a discrimination problem independent of motivational effects.

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