Affiliation:
1. University of Southern Mississippi
Abstract
The present study sought to investigate the effect of flooding and the order of serial-cue presentation on the extinction of a conditioned avoidance response. Previous research efforts have investigated the effect of flooding on extinction using a single conditional stimulus. 40 female albino rats, approximately 100 days old and weighing 250 to 300 gm., were tested. Flooding significantly facilitated the extinction of the conditioned avoidance response. Partial reversal of the order in which the serial cues were presented to the animals during flooding produced no significant differential effects. A brief analogy is drawn between the serial-cue conditioned avoidance learning model and the human phobic response. This study lends support to a current therapeutic technique which treats human phobic clients with a flooding procedure.