Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness

Avoidance Learning and Learned Helplessness

Avoidance learning and learned helplessness are critical concepts in understanding behavioral responses to negative stimuli.
Avoidance learning occurs when an organism learns that a specific behavior can prevent an unpleasant outcome. For example, a student who receives a bad grade may start studying harder to avoid future poor grades. This behavior persists even when the negative outcome is no longer present. Avoidance learning is powerful because it maintains behavior in the absence of the...

Negative and Positive Feedback

Negative and Positive Feedback

Animal organs and organ systems constantly adjust to internal and external changes through a process called homeostasis ("steady state"). Examples of these changes include regulation of the level of glucose or calcium in the blood or internal responses to external temperatures. Homeostasis requires maintaining an internal dynamic equilibrium:

Reinforcement

Reinforcement

Positive and negative reinforcement are key concepts in operant conditioning, a learning process where the consequences of a behavior affect the likelihood of that behavior being repeated.
Positive reinforcement occurs when a behavior is followed by the presentation of a rewarding stimulus, increasing the frequency of that behavior. For example:

Frustration and Conflict: Avoidance-Avoidance, Double-Approach Avoidance

Frustration and Conflict: Avoidance-Avoidance, Double-Approach Avoidance

Avoidance-avoidance conflict refers to a psychological situation where a person must choose between two or more unpleasant alternatives. These conflicts are particularly stressful because neither option is desirable. This dilemma is often expressed in sayings like "caught between a rock and a hard place" or "between the devil and the deep blue sea." For instance, individuals who fear dental procedures may find themselves torn between enduring a painful toothache or facing the anxiety of...

Feedback Inhibition

Feedback Inhibition

Biochemical reactions are occurring constantly in cells, converting starting substances to different products, usually with the help of enzymes that speed the reactions. Without enzymes, it would take far too long for most reactions to occur to be useful to the cell!

Fundamental Attribution Error

Fundamental Attribution Error

According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another person is a trait of that person, and to underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others. They tend to fail to recognize when the behavior of another is due to situational variables, and thus to the person’s state. This erroneous assumption is called the fundamental attribution...

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Classification of young adult motor fluctuation phenotypes in gait.

Journal of biomechanics·2025

Same author

Parrot Dietary Habits and Consumption of Alternate Foodstuffs.

Journal of avian medicine and surgery·2024

Same author

Facial Expression Recognition on the High Aggregation Subgraphs.

IEEE transactions on image processing : a publication of the IEEE Signal Processing Society·2023

Same author

AI in drug discovery and its clinical relevance.

Heliyon·2023

Same author

TBX18 knockdown sensitizes esophageal squamous cell carcinoma to radiotherapy by blocking the CHN1/RhoA axis.

Radiotherapy and oncology : journal of the European Society for Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology·2023

Same author

Smartwatch-Based Prediction of Single-Stride and Stride-to-Stride Gait Outcomes Using Regression-Based Machine Learning.

Annals of biomedical engineering·2023

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Investigating Pain-Related Avoidance Behavior using a Robotic Arm-Reaching Paradigm

Investigating Pain-Related Avoidance Behavior using a Robotic Arm-Reaching Paradigm

Published on: October 3, 2020

Bringing in the negative reinforcements: the avoidance feedback-related negativity.

Michael J Crowley¹, Jia Wu, Christopher A Bailey

¹Yale Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut 06473, USA. michael.crowley@yale.edu

|October 16, 2009

Summary

The feedback-related negativity (FRN) may indicate learning from avoiding negative outcomes, not just reward prediction errors. This brain signal shows when efforts to avoid bad results fail, similar to when rewards fall short.

More Related Videos

A Prediction Error-driven Retrieval Procedure for Destabilizing and Rewriting Maladaptive Reward Memories in Hazardous Drinkers

A Prediction Error-driven Retrieval Procedure for Destabilizing and Rewriting Maladaptive Reward Memories in Hazardous Drinkers

Published on: January 5, 2018

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Investigating Pain-Related Avoidance Behavior using a Robotic Arm-Reaching Paradigm

Investigating Pain-Related Avoidance Behavior using a Robotic Arm-Reaching Paradigm

Published on: October 3, 2020

A Prediction Error-driven Retrieval Procedure for Destabilizing and Rewriting Maladaptive Reward Memories in Hazardous Drinkers

A Prediction Error-driven Retrieval Procedure for Destabilizing and Rewriting Maladaptive Reward Memories in Hazardous Drinkers

Published on: January 5, 2018

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Psychology
Decision Science

Background:

The feedback-related negativity (FRN) is an electrophysiological signal linked to reward prediction errors.
Behavioral motivation often relies on avoiding negative outcomes through negative reinforcement.
The success or failure of avoiding negative stimuli may involve similar neural mechanisms to reward processing.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if the FRN is involved in learning to avoid negative outcomes.
To explore the neural correlates of successful versus unsuccessful avoidance behavior.
To determine if FRN reflects a broader learning mechanism beyond reward prediction.

Main Methods:

Recorded frontocentral event-related potentials (ERPs) during an avoidance learning task.
Analyzed ERPs time-locked to the presentation of aversive outcomes.
Compared ERPs following successful and unsuccessful avoidance attempts.

Main Results:

A negative deflection, characteristic of the FRN, was observed when expected avoidance failed.
This deflection occurred at approximately 350 ms post-stimulus, followed by a slow wave.
The FRN-like response was present in situations of failed avoidance of negative outcomes.

Conclusions:

The FRN may serve as an index for a wider range of learning processes, including the avoidance of negative outcomes.
This suggests a unified neural basis for learning from both positive and negative feedback.
FRN's role in learning could extend beyond reward prediction errors to encompass aversive learning.