The scientific understanding of fear and anxiety—in both normal and pathological forms—is presently limited by a predominance of studies that use male animals and Pavlovian fear conditioning-centered paradigms that restrict and assess specific behaviors (e.g., freezing) over brief sampling periods and overlook the broader contributions of the spatiotemporal context to an animal’s behavioral responses to threats. Here, we use a risky “closed economy” system, in which the need to acquire food and water and the need to avoid threats are simultaneously integrated into the lives of rats, to examine sex differences in mitigating threat risk while foraging. Rats lived for an extended period (∼2 months) in enlarged chambers that consisted of a safe, bedded nest and a risky foraging area where footshocks could be delivered unpredictably. We observed that male and female rats used different strategies for responding to the threat of footshock. Whereas male rats increased the size of meals consumed to reduce the overall time spent foraging, female rats sacrificed their metabolic needs in order to avoid shocks. Ovarian hormone fluctuations were shown to exert slight but reliable rhythmic effects on risky decision-making in gonadally intact female rats. However, this did not produce significant differences in approach–avoidance trade-offs between ovariectomized and intact female groups, suggesting that male–female sex differences are not due to the activational effects of gonadal hormones but, rather, are likely to be organized during early development.

College students’ study strategies were explored by tracking the ways they navigated the websites of two large (Ns of 1384 and 671) online introductory psychology courses. Students’ study patterns were measured analyzing the ways they clicked outside of the regularly scheduled class on study materials within the online Learning Management System. Three main effects emerged: studying course content materials (as opposed to course logistics materials) outside of class and higher grades are consistently correlated; studying at any time except in the late night/early morning hours was strongly correlated with grades; students with higher Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores made higher grades but accessed course materials at lower rates that those with lower SATs. Multiple regressions predicting grades using just SATs and click rates accounted for almost 43 and 36 percent of the grade variance for the Fall and Spring classes respectively. Implications for using click patterns to understand and shape student learning are discussed.

No abstract