= Escape learning
<Escape learning> is learning an action that terminates an already-present aversive event. If making the response becomes more likely because it ends the event, the contingency is <negative reinforcement>. It differs from <avoidance learning>, in which an action prevents or postpones the event before it begins.
For example, compare a response that stops an ongoing unpleasant sound with one that prevents the sound after a warning cue. The physical response could be identical while its relation to the event differs. A yoked control can receive the same event timings without controlling them, separating exposure from controllability. Classic learned-helplessness experiments used such differences in prior controllability to study later escape performance. <Failure to escape traumatic shock by Martin Seligman and others>[1967, experimental comparison of controllable and uncontrollable prior exposure]{ref} Performance also depends on sensory, motor and motivational conditions, not learning alone.
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