Response bias induced in rats by response effects.
Two experiments examined whether response choice in rats is affected by the presentation of response-produced stimuli. Rats were first trained to emit two different responses, with each response producing a unique auditory stimulus. Subsequently, the former response-produced stimuli were presented while the two response options were freely available. Presentation of a former response-produced stimulus caused the rats to choose more frequently the response option that had previously produced that specific stimulus over the other response option. However, although statistically significant, this response-biasing effect was numerically weak and was only apparent when the stimuli no longer had a general response-activating effect. Moreover, in the case of relatively short presentations of the stimuli, the response-biasing effect was only present if, during testing, the responses continued to produce the auditory stimuli according to the response-effect mapping used during training. These results were discussed in terms of possible underlying associations and were contrasted with previous results from analogous human studies on action control by response-produced stimuli.
Maes
J H R
JH
NICI/Biological Psychology, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. r.maes@nici.ru.nl
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D015982:Bias; D002755:Choice Behavior; D003213:Conditioning, Psychological; D008297:Male; D011589:Psychology, Experimental / Q000379:methods / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D051381:Rats; D017208:Rats, Wistar; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology