Effects of Coping Response on Stress in a Discrete-Trial Lever-Press Escape Situation in Rats

Effects of coping response with electric shocks upon stress under the conditions in which the amount of relevant feedback was minimized were examined under both signaled and unsignaled shock conditions in a discretetrial lever-press escape situation using 28 rats. One group of rats could escape shock by pressing the lever, the other was yoked with the above group with respect to shock experience. For half of the rats in each group shock was signaled, but for the other half it was unsignaled. The above shock treatments were superimposed upon drinking behavior. There was significantly less suppression of overall drinking in both Escapable groups than in the Yoked control groups, indicating the stress-reducing effects of coping response with respect to the basal emotional level(BEL), but no difference was found in the conditioned emotional response (CER), in both signaled and unsignaled shock conditions.