title: Performance of BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice under an incremental repeated acquisition of behavioral chains procedure.
abstract: BALB/c (n=8) and C57BL/6 (n=11) male mice were trained under an incremental repeated acquisition (IRA) procedure using two distinct training procedures: forward and backward chaining. A new metric for assessing progress on the IRA procedure, progress quotient (PQ), quantified progress as the product of chain length and number of reinforcers earned during a session divided by the total number of reinforcers earned. BALB/c mice progressed further, had higher overall responding, earned more reinforcers, and acquired the response sequences faster than the C57BL/6 mice on both training procedures. There were only minimal effects of training procedure for either strain. The strain differences found between BALB/c and C57BL/6 mice confirm the importance of genetic background to behavior. C57BL/6 mice may be deficient in learning as compared with BALB/c mice but other contributing factors probably include overall responding, motivation, and more rapid satiation or habituation to sucrose reinforcement by the C57BL/6 mice. PQ is a sensitive and valid measure of progress for use in studies of mastery-based incremental repeated acquisition and BALB/c mice perform this challenging learning task better than do C57BL/6 mice.
authors.affiliation: Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36830, USA.
authors.forename: Jennifer M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Jordan M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Bailey
authors.forename: Joshua E
authors.initials: JE
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: M Christopher
authors.initials: MC
authors.lastname: Newland
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology; D003216:Conditioning, Operant / Q000502:physiology; D003627:Data Interpretation, Statistical; D008297:Male; D051379:Mice; D008807:Mice, Inbred BALB C; D008810:Mice, Inbred C57BL; D011597:Psychomotor Performance / Q000502:physiology*; D012055:Reinforcement Schedule; D012691:Serial Learning / Q000502:physiology*; D013045:Species Specificity