Exposure to Non-Contingent Light Change in Separate Sessions Prior to Light-Contingent Bar Pressing

The reported experiment investigated the effects of prior exposure to non-contigent light change over five sessions on subsequent light-contingent bar pressing (LCBP) behaviour. Prior exposure reduced the frequency of LCBP over the initial sessions, but responding then increased so that the effect was no longer evident in the middle and terminal LCBP sessions. That is, prior exposure to non-contingent light change affected LCBP by retarding its acquisition. It was argued that this overall result is consistent with previous research on the effects of prior experience of reinforcement being non-contingent on subsequent response-contingent behaviour, where the effect has sometimes been characterized as “learned helplessness”. This previous research, however, has concentrated on the strong conventional reinforcers such as shock avoidance and food. The present findings show that intrinsically motivated behaviour with a weak reinforcer is also affected by prior experience of the reinforcer as an uncontrollable event.