The functional properties of a conditioned cue
Date
1969
Authors
Wong, Bernice Yee Lan
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Abstract
The present thesis consists of the two experiments designed to answer questions raised in a study by Marx and Murphy (1961). Experiment I studied the question whether discriminative training was necessary for establishing an effective secondary motivator. Two groups of rats experienced differential food-buzzer exposure on Days 1-3 of the experiment. For one group, food and buzzer were always paired; this pairing of food and buzzer was merely temporal, devoid of any intervening discriminative training. For the other group, food and buzzer were never paied. On Days 4-5, all Ss were given acquisition training of a simple runway response. The buzzer was absent during runway acquisition. On Day 6, Ss were tested for resistant to extinction. The buzzer was introduced on the fifth extinction trail and ever fifth trial thereafter. The results indicated no difference between groups, and were interpreted to mean that discriminative-training was necessary for establishing an effective secondary motivator.
Experiment II investigated the effects of the reinforcing properties of a conditioned cue on resistance to extinction. This was done in order to assess the justification of Marx and Murphy's suggestion to ... secondary reinforcers as secondary motivators. The experimental produced of Experiment II was a replication of Experiment I with one major exception. During the test of resistance to extinction, the buzzer was sounded in the goalbox (GB).
The results indicated that the paired Ss were stronger in resistance to extinction. This finding demonstrated the effectiveness of the reinforcing properties of a conditioned cue on resistance to extinction. Taken together, all three experiments (Marx and Murphy, 1961 and the present experiments I and II) suggest that discriminative training is not necessary for establishing a secondary reinforcer but is necessary for establishing a secondary motivator.