Learned suppression of ingestion: role of discriminative stimuli, ingestive responses, and aversive tastes.
Three experiments were designed to demonstrate that animals learn to suppress contact with aversive-tasting foods and fluids, and to investigate the behavioral mechanisms of this learning. In Experiment 1, domestic chicks (Gallus gallus) rapidly learned to suppress drinking during a visual stimulus (SQ) that signaled ingestion of a quinine solution but drank normally during a second visual stimulus (SW) that signaled water access. In Experiment 2, chicks in Group Con received oral infusions of quinine contingent upon drinking during SQ. Group Non received oral quinine infusions during SQ yoked to those of Group Con and noncontingent upon drinking. Only Group Con suppressed drinking during SQ. The third experiment investigated the contribution of the aversive taste and the postingestive effects into either the beak or the crop following drinking during SQ. Only the orally infused subjects suppressed drinking during SQ. These studies suggest that the relation between the drinking response and the aversive taste of quinine during SQ is crucial to the learned suppression of ingestion produced by the present procedures. The implications of these results for theories of food selection and Batesian mimicry are discussed.
D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D002645:Chickens; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004326:Drinking; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011803:Quinine; D011930:Reaction Time; D013649:Taste
D011803:Quinine