Frustration theory: an overview of its experimental basis

Abstract

At the end of Chapter 1, brief reference was made to our recent work on the ontogeny of a number of reward-schedule effects in infant rats. This developmental work emerged out of many years of research in which the adult rat – and to a lesser extent other animals – served as a laboratory preparation to study dispositional learning, the acquisition of certain emotional-temperamental characteristics that seem to be common to humans and other mammals. One of our particular concerns has been to study the effects of frustrative nonreward on arousal, suppression, and persistence in the context of a theory of such effects, frustration theory. This chapter provides an overview of this theory and of the experimental work on which it was based and which it has predicted. It deals with the first two items of strategy presented at the end of Chapter 1 (Table 1.2). The chapters that follow deal in more detail with the specifics of the theory and experimental work and provide material relative to the other four items in the table, which have to do with the order of appearance in ontogeny of the reward-schedule effects and their neurobiological substrate. Setting the boundary conditions It is important in defining the boundary conditions for frustration theory to differentiate three kinds of dichotomous outcomes of behavior, because they are often regarded as synonymous. The theory, as presented in this book, is focused on the role of reward and nonreward (or reduced or delayed reward) in learned behavior and its development; it does not address directly the dynamics of success and failure.