The investigation sought to examine resistance to extinction (Rn) as a function of previous experience with downward shifts in reward magnitude. It was suggested that previous research conducted within the framework of the Spence-Amsel frustration hypothesis and the sequential hypothesis failed to administer sufficient postshift trials to adequately establish the relationships that may exist. Under one condition, four groups of rats received twenty extinction trials following forty postshift trials. Under another condition, four groups were extinguished following eighty postshift trials. An inverse magnitude of reward effect occurred in the preshift phases, however, which prevented an adequate analysis of either the shift or the Rn data, This unexpected effect was discussed within the framework of Black's incentive-motivation interpretation of reinforcement.

Intersensory transfer of training was systematically investigated for visual to tactual and tactual to visual situations. College students were trained in one modality on a successive-shape-discrimination task, then transferred to the opposite modality to perform a related-shape-discrimination task. The investigation showed successful transfer in both directions, Transfer from vision to touch was specific to the situation wherein all discriminata were exactly the same In the two tasks. In contrast, transfer from touch to vision appeared to be a function of the subjects' ability to retain some type of schematic representation of the primary object as a mediational device to facilitate visual discrimination between the primary object and one of a slightly different shape.