ABSTRACT
When one is scrutinizing many animal testing procedures and more particularly animal models used for investigating experimental anxiety and antianxiety agents, ability to wait appears as a potential confounding variable. For instance, in standard punishment procedures, withholding bar pressing prevents the animal from being exposed to contingent electric shock (punishment), but also delays to the "safe period" the possibility of obtaining food reward and thus requires a certain ability to wait. Likewise, with reinforcement schedules in which laboratory animals are required to let a specified time elapse between successive responses to gain reward, the level of performance might not only relate to the animal's sensitivity to "frustrative" nonreward in case of premature responses but also to the animal's ability to wait. (See the reviews by Gray (1982), Soubrie (1986) and Thiebot (1986) for more detailed procedural and interpretational considerations).
