conditioned suppression

a phenomenon that occurs during an operant performance test when a conditioned response to a positive stimulus is reduced by another stimulus that is associated with an aversive stimulus. For example, a rat may be trained to press a lever to receive food. During this procedure, the rat is occasionally exposed to a series of brief electric shocks that are preceded by a tone (the conditioned stimulus). As a result, when the rat subsequently hears the tone alone, its rate of lever pressing is reduced. Conditioned suppression is also used to study classical conditioning.

Browse dictionary by letter

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Psychology term of the day

May 10th 2024

psychometric research

studies in the field of psychological measurement. Such research includes the development of new measures and appropriate methods for their scoring, the establishment of reliability and validity evidence for measures, the examination of item and scale properties and their dimensions, and the evaluation of differential item functioning across subgroups. For example, psychometric research could be used to determine whether a new scale is appropriately administered and scored in a specific subpopulation of respondents.