Helplessness Effect Research Articles

Enhanced retrieval of unpleasant memory in helpless rats

Several studies in humans have indicated an association between enhanced retrieval of unpleasant events and depressive mood. No analogy has so far been demonstrated in animals, however. The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of learned helplessness on the retrieval of unpleasant memory in rats. Animals initially exposed to a single unpleasant event in a passive avoidance task were subjected, respectively, to inescapable, escapable, or no shock stress exposure. A retention test conducted 48 hr following stress exposure showed an enhanced performance for the passive avoidance task in rats subjected to inescapable shock stress. This improved performance was not observed in escapable or no shock stress groups. This finding in the learned helplessness condition in rats, is qualitatively similar to that found in humans in depressive mood.

Modulation of [3H]Paroxetine Binding to the 5‐Hydroxytryptamine Uptake Site in an Animal Model of Depression

The effects of learned helplessness on the 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) uptake site were studied in rats using [3H]paroxetine binding. This ligand was chosen because it was demonstrated to label directly the 5-HT uptake site whereas the [3H]imipramine binding site has been demonstrated to be heterogeneous in nature. Moreover, [3H]imipramine appears to bind to a presynaptic recognition site different from the uptake site. Exposure to uncontrollable shock training and testing resulted in an overall increase in [3H]paroxetine binding in all the groups studied [nonhelpless (NLH), learned helpless (LH), spontaneously helpless (SPLH)] as compared to naive controls (NC). However, the increase in [3H]paroxetine binding was significantly higher in the LH and SPLH groups. The maximum number of [3H]paroxetine binding sites in the rat hippocampus was increased significantly in learned helpless rats (LH and SPLH) at day 4 and day 30 after the shock escape test as compared to NC and NLH rats. By contrast, in the rat hypothalamus the maximum number of [3H]paroxetine binding sites was reduced significantly in the LH rats as compared to naive controls and NLH rats during the same time course. There was no change in [3H]paroxetine binding sites in any other brain regions examined in LH, NLH, and NC rats. The results suggest that a hippocampal hypothalamic connection might play a role in the serotonergic mediation of learned helpless behavior.

Differential effects of escapable and inescapable footshock on hippocampal theta activity.

Three groups of rats were exposed to escapable shock, inescapable shock, or no shock using procedures known to induce learned helplessness effects. Twenty-four hours later, hippocampal electroencephalograms were recorded from freely moving subjects. A 5-s probe shock was delivered after 15 min, and recording continued. Frequency analyses revealed no differences between the pretreatment groups during the first recording segment. Immediately after the probe shock, however, trains of immobility-related theta activity were observed in both the escapable-and no-shock groups. No such activity was observed in the inescapable-shock group. Because immobility followed the probe shock in all groups, this relative impairment was not due to differential motor activity. These results offer in vivo support for in vitro findings suggesting that hippocampal activity is sensitive to event contingencies and is involved in stress-induced learning deficits.

Prenatal stress and learned helplessness

Prenatally stressed rats (n = 18) and non-stressed controls (n = 18) were given prior avoidance experience in a Skinner box before being trained in a two-way shuttlebox avoidance task within a standard triadic learned helplessness paradigm. Results indicated that there was no effect of prenatal stress on the acquisition of a lever press in a Skinner box, but that prenatal stress had significant adverse effects on the acquisition of a more difficult two-way shuttlebox avoidance response. The phenomenon of learned helplessness was demonstrated for non-stressed but not for prenatally stressed subjects. The failure to observe the learned helplessness effect in the prenatally stressed subjects appears to have been due to the performance of the prenatally stressed, unshocked control group which displayed slower learning similar to that of the groups exposed to uncontrollable shock.

EFFECTS OF PERSONAL AND UNIVERSAL HELPLESSNESS UPON SELF-ESTEEM

To test effects of personal and universal helplessness on self-esteem, three groups of experimental subjects completed a self-esteem questionnaire, worked on unsolvable anagrams, completed a posttest self-esteem questionnaire, and estimated their success on an angle-matching task. Subjects in a 10% failure group were led to believe they failed all anagrams, while 9 other subjects succeeded. Subjects in a 50% failure condition were led to believe they failed all anagrams while 50% of the subjects succeeded. Subjects in a 100% failure condition believed they, and 9 other subjects, failed all anagrams. Control group subjects were not exposed to failure. A 2 x 4 (sex x condition) analysis of variance, with difference between pretest and posttest self-esteem scores as the dependent variable, showed a significant main effect for success/failure conditions and sex of subject, and a significant interaction. On the angle-matching task significant main effects for success/failure and sex were observed.

Granule cell potentials in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus: Coping behavior and stress ulcers in rats

Evoked population potentials of the granule cells in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus were increased in stress-resistant rats and decreased in stress-susceptible rats, as indexed by restraint-induced gastric ulcers. Inescapable, uncontrollable shock stimulation also suppressed granule cell population spikes and interfered with subsequent coping responses when escape was possible, i.e. the so-called helplessness effect. The data were interpreted to indicate that the hippocampus is part of a coping system in stressful situations.

The relationship of probability of success and performance following unsolvable problems: Reactance and helplessness effects

The present study assessed the effects of amount of helplessness training and probability of success given prior to performance on motivational involvement and on subsequent task performance. Subjects were exposed to either high, low, or no helplessness training on a series of cognitive discrimination problems and were given instructions regarding the probability of success on those problems. In the low helplessness condition, subjects who received moderate probability of success exhibited higher motivation to perform, higher levels of frustration and hostility, and better performance than subjects in the no helplessness condition. In the high helplessness condition, subjects who received moderate or high probability of success exhibited higher motivational involvement and greater performance decrements in the subsequent task than did control subjects. The results are discussed within the context of Wortman and Brehm's theory of reactance and helplessness.

Burnout in day care workers: The effects of learned helplessness and self-esteem

The study focused on the relationships between selected personality factors and burnout in day care workers. The results indicated that caregivers who experienced emotional exhaustion and depersonalization tended toward lower self-esteem and learned helplessness. Burnout did not, however, include a reduced sense of personal accomplishment in this population.

Noncontingent reward-induced learned helplessness in humans.

Noncontingent verbal and concrete rewards were incorporated into a learned-helplessness paradigm in an attempt to provide increased generalizability of the reward-induced helplessness phenomenon. The treatment phase required subjects to reproduce a series of block-designs, for which they received either verbal or concrete reward according to one of three schedules: response contingent, 100% noncontingent, or 50% random noncontingent. A control group was not exposed to the task. The performance phase involved a letter/number-substitution coding task during which all subjects received response-contingent reward. Analysis showed a helplessness effect, with the noncontingent reward conditions producing significantly more errors and omissions than contingent reward and/or control conditions. Differences in effects of verbal and concrete rewards were nonsignificant.

Learned helplessness in chickens

Evidence of the learned helplessness effect was obtained in 24- to 48-h-old domestic chickens. Twenty-four hours after exposure to escapable shock, inescapable shock, or no shock, subjects were tested on a one-way shuttle task with shock-offset reinforcement. The inescapable shock group showed retarded learning in comparison with other groups. It is argued that the data are difficult to account for in terms of Costello’s (1978) application of the systematic bias in the triadic design.

Predictability and Timing of Self-Report in Learned Helplessness Experiments

An experiment is reported that attempted to assess the contribution of unpredictability to the learned helplessness effect. Contrary to learned helplessness theory, performance deficits resulted from exposure to uncontrollable events only when uncontrollability was also accompanied by unpredictability. Uncontrollable but predictable outcomes did not produce the effect. The experiment also demonstrated that the timing of self-report has an influence on expressed subjective confidence ratings, a finding of some significance in view of the methodology of human helplessness experiments.

Cognitive developmental level, gender, and the development of learned helplessness on mathematical calculation and reasoning tasks

The purposes of the study were, theoretically, to extend learned helplessness findings along the cognitive developmental dimension and, practically, to assess the extent to which learned helplessness in a mathematical calculation task transfers to a mathematical reasoning task. One hundred twenty-eight adolescents were assigned to appropriate treatments in a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 factorial arrangement (formal vs concrete operational level; male vs female; strategy training vs no training; helplessness treatment vs controls), with percentage correct and incorrect on a calculation and a reasoning task, respectively, as dependent variables. Large and significant main effects occurred for all factors; however, none of the interaction effects was significant. There was thus no differential advantage to persons of either gender, nor to those of the formal reasoning stage of development, in either resisting the effects of learned helplessness or in benefiting from strategy training.

Effects of (non-)contingency in a learned helplessness experiment: A re-analysis based on mood changes

In a previous study (Albersnagel, Arntz and Gerlsma, 1986) various aspects central to the attributional learned helplessness (LH) model were experimentally tested. The aim of the present study is to re-examine these issues using subsamples of Ss composed on the basis of substantial mood changes produced by experimental manipulation. The main hypothesis of this re-analysis, i.e. affect more than cognition or attribution plays a central role in learned helplessness, could not be substantiated. Although strong learned helplessness effects were reached in expectancy and certainty after non-contingent negative bogus feedback on an IQ test, this did not result in any substantial changes in achievement in the hypothesized direction. As in the previous study, neither the supposed mediating functions of attribution, nor the hypothesized function of ‘importance’, played a major role in the intensity of LH effects. Several suggestions are made to account for these results, and the best direction for future research is indicated.

The influence of stimulus intensity and motivational differences on learned helplessness deficits

Two experiments are reported which assess the moderating effects on learned helplessness deficits of individual differences in task-specific motivation and expectation of control. In Experiment 1 a neutral stimulus was used and in this case only high motivation subjects displayed helplessness deficits in response to noncontingency training. In addition, high motivation subjects demonstrated greater sensitivity to the noncontingency than did low motivation subjects. However, when an aversive stimulus was used in Experiment 2 the moderating effect of motivational differences was removed and this was accompanied by greater sensitivity to the noncontingency on the part of low motivation subjects. Indeed, the learned helplessness effect in Experiment 2 was more pronounced within the low motivation group. The theoretical significance of these findings is explored and directions for future research are suggested.

Effects of stress controllability, immunization, and therapy on the subsequent defeat of colony intruders

Three experiments investigated the influence that various stress-controllability manipulations had on the defensive behaviors of rats when they were subsequently tested as intruders in previously established, aggressive colonies of conspecifics. In Experiment 1, naive subjects that had received a session of 80 shocks in a tube showed an enhanced series of defensive responses and received more bites than did a group of restrained nonshocked rats as colony intruders 24 h later. These two measures were also found to be positively correlated within each group. In Experiment 2, a group that was given 80 yoked inescapable shocks, in contrast to a group that had wheel-turn escape training and a restrained nonshocked control group, displayed more defeat and was bitten more frequently when tested as intruders on the following day. In Experiment 3, 60 trials of wheel-turn escape training were given 4 h prior to (i.e., immunization) or after (i.e., therapy) a session of 60 inescapable tube shocks. During resident-intruder testing 24 h later, both of these groups showed less defeat and received fewer bites than did an inescapably preshocked group but did not differ from a restrained nonshocked control group. These findings clearly indicate that stress controllability alters species-typical defensive responses, and their implications concerning other learned helplessness effects and interpretations are discussed.

Persistence of Learned Helplessness in Humans

The duration of the effects of a common learned helplessness induction procedure, exposure to insoluble concept-formation problems, was assessed by varying the interval between the induction procedure and subsequent exposure to soluble anagrams. Participants tested immediately or 30 min after the induction procedure exhibited reliable helplessness deficits on all dependent measures. These effects, relative to the performance of a nonhelpless control group, were absent in subjects who experienced delays of 2 or 6 hr before anagram testing. The implications of these results for the development of more enduring helplessness effects and for the conducting of research into analogue intervention are discussed.

Interaction of Pavlovian conditioning with a zero operant contingency: Chronic exposure to signaled inescapable shock maintains learned helplessness effects.

In four experiments we used triads, consisting of escapable-shock (ES), yoked inescapable-shock (IS), and no-shock (NS) rats, to investigate the effect of the interaction between Pavlovian contingencies and a zero operant contingency (i.e., uncontrollability) upon subsequent shock-escape acquisition in the shuttle box. After exposure to 50 signals and shocks per session for nine sessions, interference with shuttle box escape acquisition for IS rats was a monotonically increasing function of the percentage of signal-shock pairings during training (Experiment 1), with 50% pairings producing little or no impairment. Without regard to signaling, ES rats performed as well as NS rats. Experiment 2 demonstrated that our training and test conditions led to substantial and equal impairment in IS rats preexposed for one session to 100% or 50% signal-shock pairings or to unsignaled shocks. In Experiment 3, chronic exposure to 100% signaled inescapable shocks resulted in impairment only if the signal (light) was present during the shuttle box test. The continuous presence of the signal during the test contrasted with its discrete (5-s) presentation during training and suggested that an antagonistic physiological reaction rather than a specific competing motor response had been conditioned. Experiment 4 provided evidence for possible conditioned opioid mediation by demonstrating contemporaneous stress-induced analgesia and shock-escape impairment in IS rats chronically exposed to 100%, but not to 50%, signal-shock pairings, and the elimination of both analgesia and escape interference by the opiate antagonist naltrexone. Thus, chronic exposure to uncontrollable shocks appears to maintain the impairment produced by acute exposure only if the shocks are adequately signaled.

Interaction of Pavlovian conditioning with a zero operant contingency: Chronic exposure to signaled inescapable shock maintains learned helplessness effects.

Interaction of Pavlovian conditioning with a zero operant contingency: Chronic exposure to signaled inescapable shock maintains learned helplessness effects.

Learned helplessness and the older dental patient.

SummaryThe theory of learned helplessness provides a framework for understanding certain dysfunctional, noncompliant behavior often seen by dental practitioners in some of their older patients. According to proponents of the theory, individuals repeatedly exposed to events perceived beyond personal control eventually have the cognitive, motivational, and affective deficits of helplessness. The loss of self‐esteem may also occur if the individual believes he or she is personally responsible for the circumstances. The multiple losses of older dental patients make them particularly vulnerable to helplessness.Practitioners and staff members have a special role in helping to prevent or reverse the effects of helplessness in older patients. When interacting with these patients, practitioners can enhance the older persons' perceived control by providing the patient with choices when possible and practical, by providing success experience, and by increasing and predictability of the oral rehabilitation process. The practitioner and auxiliary staff members can help modify patients' expectations for restoration of oral functioning when they are inappropriately high to prevent future disappointments. Finally, rehabilitation staff members need to promote autonomy and self‐sufficiency in patients, and to reject the tendency to “do for” patients those tasks that can be independently accomplished. Dental staff members can use these guidelines to enhance the quality of their interactions with older patients and can be instrumental in preventing or eliminating the behavioral deficits associated with learned helplessness.

Regularity of Inescapable Shock Duration Affects Behavioral Topography, but not Shuttle Escape Performance

One purpose of the present experiment was to investigate the effects of exposure to fixed and variable duration inescapable shock on the subsequent acquisition of a shuttle escape response. Another purpose was to examine closely the behavior of animals during exposure to inescapable shock in an attempt to assess directly the behavioral changes occurring during this experience. Competing response accounts of the learned helplessness effect propose the mechanism of adventitious reinforcement during inescapable shock for the learning of low activity responses. Exposure to inescapable fixed duration shock should therefore be more effective than variable duration shock of the same average value in producing subsequent escape deficits. However, the present experiment demonstrated equivalent shuttle escape deficits resulting from the two types of shock exposure. In addition, behavioral observations made during inescapable shock indicated that those behaviors immediately preceding shock offset during the first several trials were not more likely to develop than other behaviors that were virtually absent early in the session. This pattern of results does not support current competing response hypotheses, but is in agreement with learned helplessness theory.