title: What do rats learn about the geometry of object arrays? Tests with exploratory behavior.
abstract: Six experiments using habituation of exploratory behavior tested whether disoriented rats foraging in a large arena encode the shapes of arrays of objects. Rats did not respond to changes in position of a single object, but they responded to a change in object color and to a change in position of 1 object in a square array, as in previous research (e.g., C. Thinus-Blanc et al., 1987). Rats also responded to an expansion of a square array, suggesting that they encoded sets of interobject distances rather than overall shape. In Experiments 4-6, rats did not respond to changes in sense of a triangular array that maintained interobject distances and angles. Shapes of object arrays are encoded differently from shapes of enclosures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3, Canada. shannon.skov.rackette@utoronto.ca
authors.forename: Shannon I
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: Skov-Rackette
authors.forename: Sara J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Shettleworth
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D005260:Female; D005556:Form Perception; D006185:Habituation, Psychophysiologic; D008297:Male; D051381:Rats; D020318:Rats, Long-Evans