Taste potentiation of auditory aversions in rats (Rattus norvegicus): a case for spatial contiguity.
An aversion for an auditory stimulus was established in laboratory rats when a tone was spatially and temporally contiguous with a novel taste in a food conditioned stimulus compound followed by toxicosis. The procedure involved varying the location of the tone relative to a novel tasting food. During toxicosis conditioning, one group ate sweet food with a speaker located in the food, two groups ate sweet food with the speaker displaced (near or far) from the food, and a fourth group was presented with a tone without food available. It was found that the potentiation of auditory aversions required both the presence of a novel taste and spatial contiguity between the taste and the tone.
D000161:Acoustic Stimulation; D000818:Animals; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D011041:Poisoning / Q000503:physiopathology; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains; D013017:Sound Localization; D013649:Taste