Conditioned Suppression and the Effects of Classical Conditioning on Operant Behavior

This chapter considers the effects of procedures of this nature in which events which signal the delivery of a US such as food or a shock are presented independently of an animal’s behavior. It provides a comprehensive review of the truly vast body of literature reporting experiments in which Pavlovian procedures have been superimposed on operant behavior. Many investigators have found that the amount of conditioned suppression is a function of conventional parameters in classical conditioning. The amount of conditioned suppression depends in part, then, on the frequency of reinforcement and on the rate of operant responding. The effects of conditioned suppression procedures have also been investigated with fixed-ratio and fixed-interval schedules. The measurement of conditioned suppression is fraught with difficulties, some of which pose interesting dilemmas. Many researchers have suggested that a preshock stimulus produces a change in the motivational state of a subject, which in turn leads to conditioned suppression.