In general , the deprivation conditions existing at the time secondary reinforcing existing properties are established, or at the time they are tested, appear to be of importance only in determining the basic level of activity of the organism. For example, Brown(1956) gave half her rats 60 simultaneous pairing of light and buzzer with food pellet, while the other animals received the light and buzzer 28 seconds before a pellet was delivered, and thus presumably had no functional pairing of them. Half of each of these two groups received their training under relatively low food deprivation and half under fairly high deprivation conditions.