Punishment Suppression: Some Effects on Alternative Behaviour

Three experiments using a multiple response technique (Dunham, 1978) with Mongolian gerbils were designed to investigage die effect of different methods of producing response suppression on nonsuppressed (alternative) behaviour. In the first experiment white noise was used to punish eating, running or digging, respectively, in three groups of gerbils. Noise suppressed the target behaviour in each group, and the behaviour suppressed seemed to determine which alternative would increase in duration to take its place. In the second experiment eating was suppressed with white noise, shock, or by removing the food. Regardless of the method of suppression, the same alternative–digging–increased to replace eating. In the third experiment eating was again suppressed by shock, food removal, or satiation. Again in the shock and removal groups digging increased, but in the satiated group running increased. We argue that these results are consistent with a description of response suppression that claims that the increase in alternative behaviours is secondary to the suppression mechanism and that the behaviour that will increase to replace the suppressed behavior is determined by the underlying momentary motivational hierarchy at the time of response suppression.