ANALYSIS OF AUTOSHAPING IN GOLDFISH

Stimulus-reinforcer and response-reinforcer control of target-striking in goldfish were studied in a series of discrete-trials experiments. Evidence of control by adventitious response-reinforcer contiguity was provided by the first experiment, which showed less response in animals given omission training than in yoked animals with the same stimulus-reinforcer experience. In the next three experiments, evidence of control by stimulus-reinforcer contiguity apart from response-reinforcer contiguity was sought in within-subjects comparisons of omission and extinction. Only the last of these experiments, in which the CS duration was short and the ITI long, showed greater response in omission. A subsidiary finding is that autoshaped goldfish respond very little, either to the CS target or to the feeder, when target and feeder are spatially discontiguous. © 1979 Psychonomic Society, Inc.