The structure of individual differences in heterogeneous stock mice across problem types and motivational systems.
Sixty Heterogeneous Stock (HS) mice received a battery of six problem-solving tasks and three control procedures. The problem-solving tasks included Hebb-Williams, a place learning task conducted in a plus maze, radial maze, a working memory test following the radial maze, a set of detour problems and a visual non-matching to sample task. The control procedures consisted of land and water activity measures and a light-dark test. The correlation matrix derived from these tasks did not exhibit positive manifold, that is, positive correlations across all problem-solving tasks. Principal components analysis reduced the correlation matrix to four components with eigenvalues exceeding 1.0. Instead of the general factor solution common in the study of human problem-solving, this component structure appeared more congenial to a modular interpretation, with the four components each explaining approximately the same magnitude of matrix variance.
Locurto
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Department of Psychology, PO Box 75A, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 01610, USA. clocurto@holycross.edu
Fortin
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Sullivan
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D000818:Animals; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic / Q000502:physiology; D018782:Maze Learning / Q000502:physiology; D051379:Mice; D008815:Mice, Inbred Strains; D009042:Motivation; D011340:Problem Solving / Q000502:physiology; D013045:Species Specificity