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D N ELLIOTT

Publications and source records attributed to D N ELLIOTT.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1963

Size and reliability of frequency-difference thresholds determined with operant tracking procedure.

Auditory frequency discrimination thresholds have been determined by a "tracking procedure" at five frequencies and two intensity levels for a group of four cats. Intra-animal thresholds were found to be quite stable, and there was good inter-animal agreement among three of the four cats. Although quite stable, the tracking thresholds were larger than those which had been obtained using an avoidance procedure. However, because of the several differences between the tracking procedure and avoidance conditioning procedure, no conclusions can be drawn concerning the efficacy of the different types of reinforcement in determining the ultimate limit of the animals' discrimination ability.

Animals↗
PubMed1962

A tracking procedure for determining the cat's frequency discrimination.

A tracking procedure was used to investigate the time required to train cats to discriminate between a frequency-modulated tone and a steady tone. The animal was reinforced with food on a VR schedule only when the steady tone was present and the animal pressed the correct bar (one of two). After reinforcement, the steady tone usually changed to a frequency-modulated signal; by pressing the other bar, the tone could be changed to its steady state and the reinforcement then obtained as before. A major difficulty was the lack of control by the auditory stimulus on the cat's responses. This problem was solved by introducing interpress time outs which forced the animal to hesitate after every press. The use of light cues to signal the time outs and the correct bar to press accelerated the rate at which the training progressed. With cats, this conditioning procedure apparently requires a much longer training period before the actual threshold determinations than the more commonly used avoidance conditioning procedures. However, when animals are to be tested repeatedly over a period of several months or longer, the procedure may prove the more desirable one because it reduces experimental neurosis.

Animals↗