Animal models of psychopathology: the establishment, maintenance, attenuation, and persistence of head-banging by pigeons

Investigators of animal models of psychopathology have typically introduced experimental conditions so that an animal’s behavior progressively deviates from a baseline of routine laboratory behavior toward a pattern which resembles human psychopathological behavior in some form of S, then R relation. The present experiments report consequential contingency procedures for bringing head-to-wall head-banging by an animal under experimental control and analysis. The first two experiments examined the establishment and maintenance by reinforcement of head-banging by pigeons. The final two experiments examined the occurrence of head-banging, under conditions of extinction and limited reinforcement, when an alternative behavior, i.e., key-pecking, was reinforced under a variety of reinforcement schedules. Extinguished and infrequently reinforced head-banging was found to recur under a variety of conditions including the reinforcement of the more “normal” alternative behavior. To the extent that human patterns are governed by similar functional relations, the data may be of relevance in the analysis of the maintenance, attenuation, and recurrence of human patterns designated as pathological. Further, the permanent elimination of a disturbing pattern may be difficult, and the recurrence of a disturbing pattern might properly be considered a likely and “normal” outcome of basic behavioral processes.