Instrumental Escape Conditioning in a Water Tank: Preliminary Report

Abstract

Rats must learn to swim down a tank of water, and motivation (drive stimulus intensity) is manipulated by means of the water temperature. Reinforcement (reduction in drive stimulus intensity) is manipulated independently by means of the differential temperature between the alley tank and a separate goal tank. The purpose of this note is to generally describe the technique and indicate its usefulness for the study of instrumental escape conditioning.