Attenuation of the intermittent punishment effect: The effect of interpolated punishment and nonreward trials

Intermittent punishment of a response is known to increase the persistence of that response to more intense and/or more frequent punishment. In the present experiment, rats with a history of intermittent punishment were subjected to blocks of trials on which every response was both punished and nonreinforced. In a subsequent test for persistence to a high level of punishment, these animals failed to show greater persistence than controls. The results were seen as evidence for the role of an association between fear and the intermittently punished response and were interpreted as consistent with a conditioning model interpretation of the effect of intermittent punishment training.