Some important parameters in escape conditioning are the following:
Bower, Fowler and Trapold (1959) obtained that, as occurs in studies with positive reinforcement, the observable behavior of the experimental subjects was in line with the intensity of the stimulation presented: the greater the stimulation intensity, the greater the running speed in escape behaviors and, in the case of Changing this intensity, if they increased it, the speed of the escape behavior was specifically increased; and if the former decreased, so did the latter.
In avoidance learning, a large block of parameters refer to the intensity and duration of the discriminative stimulus that precedes the presentation of the aversive stimulation. Here the results indicate that how much more intense be the signal that precedes the presentation of the aversive stimulation, higher performance in the avoidance response.
One of the main two-process theories in avoidance learning is “biprocess mediational theory of fear” (Mowrer, 1947; Solomon and Brush, 1954; Rescorla and Solomon, 1967).
It is assumed that the application of aversive stimulation to a subject provokes a fear reaction. In avoidance designs, the aversive stimulus (which would function as a classic US) is paired by contiguity with a signal that precedes it (normally a light or a sound from a buzzer that acts as a CS), provoking a fear response. the presentation of the EC. This fear is responsible for the avoidance response: when the response is made, the CS ends, the fear is reduced, and this reduction in fear is the reinforcement for having made the avoidance response.
Another two-process theory in avoidance learning is “two-process theory of aversion”. The existence of two processes is also postulated (classical, by which the stimuli present and paired with the aversive stimulus become “harmful” either “aversive”; and instrumental, based on which the response made immediately before the disappearance of the aversive stimulus is reinforced).
Unlike the biprocess theory of fear, in this one, the definition of “aversion” It is fully operationalizable (without the theoretical surplus that the hypothetical construct of fear has) and, in more precise terms, it refers to an increase in the probability of occurrence of the responses made immediately before the disappearance of a stimulus. Another biprocess theory in avoidance learning has been formulated by Heirnstein (1969) and has been described as “discriminative theory”. Avoidance learning is explained by appealing to decriminative learning processes.
The existence of two processes (classical and instrumental) is not assumed. The external stimuli that precede the presentation of the aversive stimulus act as cues or environmental cues and function as “antecedents” to the appearance of the aversive stimulation. Another two-process theory in avoidance learning, the most recent, is represented by “cognitive theory” by Seligman and Johnston (1973). There are two components for this theory, one cognitive and the other emotional. The cognitive component is represented by expectation.
The emotional component, due to classically conditioned fear, understood as an elicitor of responses (in this theory the reinforcement that is achieved with the reduction of fear does not play any role). All of this assumes that there is a conditioned fear response and whose mission is to serve as an elicitor of observable responses, but the reduction of this fear is not relevant.
Bandura concluded: “The general evidence seems to indicate that learning can occur without awareness, albeit at a slow rate, but that symbolic representation of response and reinforcement contingencies can markedly accelerate appropriate accountability.”
Covertism is a mediational theoretical position that uses the vocabulary of classical and operant conditioning (although insisting more on the latter) and postulates that the imaginative and conceptual dynamics follow the same laws as the directly observable, muscular responses, which are studied in the laboratory experiments. The highest representative is Caution.