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S Mineka

Publications and source records attributed to S Mineka.

7 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1990

Selective associations in the observational conditioning of fear in rhesus monkeys.

Three experiments explored the issue of selective associations in the observational conditioning of fear. Experiment 1 results indicated that observer rhesus monkeys acquired a fear of snakes through watching videotapes of model monkeys behaving fearfully with snakes. In Experiment 2, observers watched edited videotapes that showed models reacting either fearfully to toy snakes and nonfearfully to artificial flowers (SN+/FL-) or vice versa (FL+/SN-). SN+/FL- observers acquired a fear of snakes but not of flowers; FL+/SN- observers did not acquire a fear of either stimulus. In Experiment 3, monkeys solved complex appetitive discriminative (PAN) problems at comparable rates regardless of whether the discriminative stimuli were the videotaped snake or the flower stimuli used in Experiment 2. Thus, monkeys appear to selectively associate snakes with fear.

Animals↗
PubMed1975

Some new perspectives on conditioned hunger.

One theory holds that appetitive drives such as hunger and thirst are not conditionable because of their slow onset. However, recent evidence has shown only transitory conditioning of appetitive drives even with rapid onset. Such experiments may have failed because: (a) Exteroceptive conditioned stimuli (CSs) used in past experiments may be less easily accociated with the internal hunger drive than are interoceptive taste cues. Experiments 1-3 provided some support for this hypothesis. (b) The dependent measures used in past experiments may not be valid. Experiments 4 and 5 suggested that changes in the rate of bar pressing on an operant extinction curve following probe CSs for hunger may be a more sensitive and valid index of conditioned appetitive drive. However, the elusive and transitory nature of these results demands a reexamination of the basic difference between appetitive and aversive drives, which lies in the mode of their onset and control and which, given adaptive considerations, can account for their widely different conditionability.

Animals↗
PubMed1975

Conditioned drinking as avoidance learning.

Blocking the robust conditioned drinking response following conditioning eliminates the isotonic procaine conditioned response (CR) but not the hypertonic procaine CR. Rats allowed to drink in the box during conditioning form a larger CR than rats merely injected with hypertonic or isotonic procain who are prevented from drinking in the box: response blocking during extinction eliminated if no experience of drinking water in the box occurs either during baseline or during conditioning. Blocking the drinking response, like blocking shock avoidance, markedly reduces its high resistance to extinction. This suggests that rats overdrink to avoid anticipated illness, and fail to extinguish partially because they are never exposed to the fact that no illness will occur even if no drinking occurs.

Animals↗