SCHEDULES USING NOXIOUS STIMULI .6. AN INTERLOCKING SHOCK-POSTPONEMENT SCHEDULE IN SQUIRREL MONKEY

Responding was studied under various schedules of electric shock postponement and presentatation in the squirrel monkey. Under an interlocking shock‐postponement schedule, successive responses decreased the time by which a response postponed the next scheduled shock until a shock immediately followed the nth response. Some parameters of this schedule, which can be formally related to fixed‐interval schedules, engendered a pattern of positively accelerated responding between shocks. This pattern did not occur under comparable parameter values of an alternative fixed‐ratio, avoidance schedule under which each response postponed shock by a fixed duration and every nth response produced shock. Subsequently, performances were studied under schedules of shock presentation. Responding was never maintained under fixed‐ratio schedules of shock presentation, but was maintained with a pattern of positive acceleration under an alternative fixed‐ratio, fixed‐interval schedule and under a fixed‐interval schedule. 1969 Society for the Experimental Analysis of Behavior