Are conditioned stimuli determinants of oriented exploratory behavior in the rat?
To test Bindra and Palfai's hypothesis about enhancing and inhibitory motivational effects of a conditioned stimulus on exploratory behavior, rats in a first experiment were submitted to pairings of a tone with (a) water, (b) intermittent deliveries of water after a period of constant pairing. In a control condition, the tone was presented alone. The tone was subsequently presented during oriented exploration of a novel stimulus, in the conditioning context. There was no difference in exploratory performance between conditions. In a second experiment with another kind of stimulus change and a larger number of training trials, exploration did not increase when occurring during CS presentation. The lack of facilitation which is possibly the product of competition between exploration and magazine-directed responses, can also be interpreted as indicating that the effects of a conditioned stimulus are reinforcer specific and that the diffuse activity it generates in a situation different from the training one is not equivalent, as concerns the processes involved, to oriented exploratory behavior.
D000818:Animals; D001143:Arousal; D003214:Conditioning, Classical; D003463:Cues; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D051381:Rats; D011919:Rats, Inbred Strains