Some theorists, particularly investigators in avoidance conditioning, have held that an intervening state of the organism, labeled fear, is the primary response conditioned when an aversive UCS is used, and have tended to minimize the importance of the similarity of the UR. To test this relationship, 60 albino rats were run in a hurdle-jumping apparatus where the CS was one which previously had been associated with various degrees of unconditioned response restriction in a conditioning phase. The results indicated that the overt response which could be made by S in response to the US was important, since the difference between the restricted and unrestricted groups was significant.
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