9 male hooded rats were trained to press a lever for food on a variable interval schedule of reinforcement. They received 40 1-hr. sessions on 1 of 4 temporally defined schedules of conditioned suppression. A new procedure was then designed. Ss received 15 sessions in which electric shock occurred either at the end of programmed stimulus periods or contingent upon the first response emitted after onset of the last minute in stimulus. A significant punishment effect of contingent shock was observed (p < .01) that was mostly due to shock closely following a whole sequence of responses. The usefulness of the behavioral baseline thus obtained for the study of psychotropic drugs is discussed.
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