title: The role of homecage environmental stimuli in the facilitation of shock-motivated spatial discrimination learning in rat pups.
abstract: In three experiments we examined the role of homecage environmental stimuli on learning an aversively motivated spatial discrimination task in 11-day-old rats. Varying the presence and absence of nest shavings in the correct and incorrect arms of a T-maze in Experiment 1 revealed that nest shavings had both nondirective facilitation and approach-eliciting properties. Training the 11-day-old rats in the presence or absence of shavings over three daily sessions and comparing their performance on the third day of training with that of a maturation control in Experiment 2 indicated that there is a residual training effect of the approach-eliciting property of nest shavings on shock-escape behavior. In Experiment 3, using nest shavings either as an irrelevant stimulus or as a redundant relevant cue in an aversively motivated T-maze reversal task suggested that 11-day-old rats acquire the discrimination task using non-nest spatial or directional cues as well as those provided by nest shavings. Overall, these results suggest that nest shavings introduced into aversively motivated tasks create a learning environment comparable to that of appetitively motivated instrumental tasks utilizing suckling from an anesthetized dam as a reinforcer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania 17870.
authors.forename: J R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Misanin
authors.forename: C F
authors.initials: CF
authors.lastname: Hinderliter
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001143:Arousal; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D004597:Electroshock; D009042:Motivation; D009949:Orientation; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D012931:Social Environment