Effects of Drive Level upon Differentiation of Response Force.

Abstract

Five groups of rats were trained to press an isometric manipulandum and were rewarded with a 20 mg. pellet on responses meeting or exceeding an 8.0 gm. force criterion. All groups were run under 24 hr. food deprivation with different drive levels determined by prefeeding of 0, 3, 6, 9, or 12 gms. The major findings are: (1) mean and median peak force of responding, as well as standard deviation of the mean, are U-shaped functions of amount of prefeeding during acquisition, with the lowest levels occuring at an intermediate drive level; (2) gain is an inverse U-shaped function of amount of prefeeding during acquisition, with the highest value occuring at an intermediate drive level. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Apr 01, 1966
Accession Number
AD0740381

Entities

People

  • W. Douglas Ensminger

Organizations

  • Princeton University

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Data Science
  • Deprivation
  • Food Deprivation
  • Information Science
  • Standards

Fields of Study

  • Psychology

Readers

  • Brain and Cognitive Science; Experimental Psychology; Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Mathematics or Statistics