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.