Suckling as incentive to instrumental learning in preweanling rats.
Neonatal rats as young as 7 days of age learned, reversed, and retained a left-right discrimination with a nonlactating nipple as the incentive. These results have implications for the ontogeny of associative processes and for their neurological and neurochemical mediators.
D000818:Animals; D000831:Animals, Newborn / Q000502:physiology*; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology*; D004192:Discrimination, Psychological / Q000502:physiology; D051381:Rats; D012153:Retention, Psychology / Q000502:physiology; D013391:Sucking Behavior / Q000502:physiology*