Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 12, 2025
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Modeling Verbal Behavior Deficits with the Stimulus Control Ratio Equation, SCoRE
Published on: May 14, 2019
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Learning to stop responding
Mark E Bouton1, Matthew C Broomer1
1University of Vermont, USA.
Behavioural Processes
|January 26, 2023
Summary
Animals learn to stop responding in different ways depending on the situation. Some learned inhibition is specific to the exact action, while other forms are more general.
Area of Science:
- Behavioral Psychology
- Animal Learning
- Neuroscience of Learning
Background:
- Behavioral adaptation to environmental changes is crucial for survival.
- Understanding how animals learn to inhibit responses is key to behavioral flexibility.
Approach:
- Review of recent research on operant extinction, punishment, and feature-negative learning.
- Analysis of response specificity and context dependency in learned inhibition.
Key Points:
- Response suppression in extinction and punishment is highly context- and response-specific.
- Inhibition in feature-negative learning is less response-specific, showing generalization.
- Response-specific inhibition may arise from correcting 'response error'.
Conclusions:
- Behavioral inhibition can be both response-specific and response-general.
- The learning context influences whether inhibition is specific to an action or generalizes.
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