acquisition = 1. (emp, bt) progressive increments in response-strength observed over a series of occasions on which the response is measured. = 2. (emp) any modification of behavior in which a response changes in strength or topography, or occurs in new environments.
action-specific energy, specific action energy = (th, eth) a hypothetical construct inferred from changes in stimulus threshold, intensity, and rate of occurrence of an unlearned response with time and with frequency of occurrence of the response. Its quantity becomes very low when the response is made; it then recovers with time in the absence of response (26). This concept is almost identical with Skinner's respondent reflex reserve (22). See reflex reserve and exhaustion.
adaptation = (emp) habituation. The use of this synonym for habituation should be avoided because of the inevitable confusion with sensory adaptation and with the many other usages it enjoys.
adaptation/sensory = (emp) change, incremental or decremental, in response or response-strength that has been experimentally demonstrated to depend solely upon changes in the state of a receptor organ produced by protracted or repetitive stimulation of, or by recovery from, such stimulation of that organ.
after-discharge = 1. (emp, bt) that part of a response that occurs after the termination of the stimulus that elicited it or set the occasion for its occurrence. Uncommon usage. = 2. (emp, physiol) the term applied to discharges of nerve impulses in efferent neurons that persist in time after the stimulus that set up the discharge of which they are a part is terminated. This observation forms part of the empirical basis of the concept of the synapse.
anxiety = (th, bt) a secondary drive. Its establishing operation is the development of a discriminated avoidance conditioned response (See conditioning/avoidance and discriminated. ) The dependent symptom may be either that the stimulus of this CR now as a negative reinforcing stimulus for other responses or that the presence of this stimulus in the environment of an animal depresses the rate of occurrence of behavior usually shown in that environment, thus producing behavior unusual in that environment (such as, for the rat, defecation, urination, huddling, vocalizing, flight, excessive general activity, etc., or some combination of these). This concept has been the subject of a very great amount of experimental work in experimental psychology in late years, and it is playing an increasingly large role in the field of motivation. Some theorists now tend to consider all drives as instances of anxiety. Its relationship to the concept of anxiety as it appears in clinical circles is the subject of no little theoretical interest-and controversy. For example, when the onset of a buzzer is paired with electrical shock a number of times, a rat will learn very readily to press a bar if the bar-press shuts off the buzzer. This learning is said by drive-reduction theorists to depend upon reduction of the anxiety drive.
approach/gradient of = (emp, bt) the goal-gradient (1.), usually as measured in the runway.
attend = (emp, bt) to give any response whatsoever to a stimulus. This term defines what is probably the broadest possible class of behavior.
attention = (con) a reification, as faculty or process, of attending.
avoidance/gradient of = (emp, bt) when an animal has been repeatedly presented with a strongly aversive stimulus (as an intense electric shock) in the goal box of a runway, and measures of the strength of running from or pulling away from the goal box are made by introducing the animal into a series of positions along the runway, it is found that the strength of the behavior is inversely proportional to the distance from the goal box. This function is called the gradient of avoidance. The runway is often used in the experimental analysis of behavior in approach-avoidance conflicts. The animal, after learning to run to a goal box for food, is shocked there. His behavior on subsequent occasions can then be demonstrated as a function of the sum of a gradient of approach and a gradient of avoidance.