ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with behavior that is maintained when it removes, reduces, or prevents stimulation. It considers procedures in which cues are added, providing for stimulus control of negative reinforcement, and changing the way in which intermittent aversive stimulation affects behavior. Avoidance theorizing has conformed to a prejudgement that the reduction of aversive stimulation must be immediately discriminable upon occurrence of a response, if that reduction is to reinforce the response. R. J. Herrnstein had derived in studies of concurrent schedules of positive reinforcement and then developed to relate the rate of responding to the rate of reinforcement on single VI schedules. Extinction is the discontinuation of reinforcement, with continued opportunity to respond. A simple multiple schedules can be achieved by correlating a reinforcement procedure with one stimulus, correlating extinction with another, and alternating the two stimuli. Stimuli correlated with intermittent shocks enhance the flexibility with which negative reinforcement can be scheduled.
