THE INTERESTING WORK METHOD REGARDING AFFECTIVE

BEHAVIOURAL PSYCHOLOGY

ABSTRACT

Combining clinical and research evidence suggests that emotional distress might interrupt or
conflict with an organism's continuing behaviour as one of the numerous possible impacts. Of
course, emotion, in its broadest sense, is only one of several types of occurrences that have this
quality. However, with sufficient controlled clinical trials, it is possible to reliably induce such
emotional disruption and separate essential variables from which it is a function. The current
work offers several applications of an observation-based strategy to the experimental research
of emotional behaviour.

A. CONSISTENT SYSTEMATIC EVALUATING

Johnson and Skinner became the first to describe the technique for superimposing such a
conditioned emotional response on the lever-pressing pressing behaviour of albino rats (22).
Thirsty animals—in this case, albino hamsters initially trained in lever pushing for a
continuous, and then an aperiodic, water reward in the current variation of this technique. After
their lever pressing output has stabilised, they will be subjected to a series of conditioning trials,
every comprising of a popping noise as the conditioned stimulus, followed by a painful shock
to the foot as the unconditioned stimulus. The clicking noise lasts for 3 minutes before being
interrupted by the shock.

B. ELECTRO-CONVULSIVE SHOCK EXPERIMENTS

The first experiments with this technique looked at the effects of electro-convulsive shock
(ECS) on both the conditioned emotional response (CER) and lever-pressing behaviour. For
some time, several researchers have been interested in the effects of ECS on various aspects of
animal behaviour. Most of these researchers have focused on activities like maze running,
discrimination, conditioned avoidance, or escape responses, among others (23, 52).
Surprisingly little study has been paid to the differential effects of ECS on acquired emotional
sensitivities and reactions akin to the "anxiety" paradigm described above. Early data (29), on
the other hand, demonstrated unequivocally that a series of 21 ECS treatments administered
three times per day for seven days may significantly reduce this CER.

C. STUDIES ON ABLATION

Several researchers have identified effective behavioural alterations associated with a wide
range of experimental brain injuries in laboratory animals over the last two decades. Such
modifications have been observed in preparations following brain stem transaction at the
interfollicular level. Decerebration according to Sherrington lesions of the hypothalamus
lesions of the septa1 region lesions of the amygdaloid complex and lesions of various sections
of the thalamus These findings, together with Paper and MacLean's more systematic treatments
of the "visceral brain" as the anatomic substrate of emotion, raise provocative questions about
the mediating role of this fornix circuit (hippocampus-fornix-septum-hypothalamus-anterior
thalamus cingulate-PR subiculum-hippocampus) in conditioned emotional behaviour and have
provided the setting for a series of ablation studies using the CER response, as well as a
comparable avoidance tactic

D. SOME OF THE CER'S FUNCTIONAL PROPERTIES

Numerous empirical observations, then, establish the reality of this phenomenon we call
conditioned "anxiety," and elaborate somewhat on the conditions under which long-term
changes in such emotional behaviour can be affected as a result of electro-convulsive shock,
and neural ablation, and other experimental operations. However, until recently, no attempt has
been made to determine the precise nature of the functional link between this phenomenon and
other behaviour by systematic experimental observation. In one laborious experiment, for
example, it was possible to demonstrate that the pace of acquisition and resistance to extinction
of the conditioned emotional response are both affected by the severity of the unconditioned
shock stimulus and the number of conditioning repetitions. The CER was obtained As the
intensity of the shock and the number of conditioning trials increased, extinction became much
faster and extinction became significantly slower (unpublished data).
 E. CONCLUSION

Minor differences in the contingencies that define the interaction between these stimuli, on the
other hand, can create significant modifications in both the topography and dynamic functional
aspects of the observed behaviour. Many attempts have been made to reduce these behavioural
differences to a single general principle—that is, to emphasise the role of conditioned "fear" as
a motivational construct mediating the creation of instrumental behaviour in such experimental
contexts. The general orientation of the research presented in this paper stands in stark contrast
to the current emphasis on learned drives and comparable constructs. This more empirical
approach, on the other hand, certainly reflects some concern that such monolithic ordering, if
adopted prematurely, may tend to mask substantial differences as well as significant
similarities.

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