As a result of a proposed response-produced cue deficit in rats with septal damage, an attempt was made to determine whether rats with such damage would be overly dependent on exteroceptive cues. Normal and septallesioned rats were trained to perform a behavioral chain where both exteroceptive and response-produced cues could be used. During extinction, these two sets of cues were placed in conflict in order to determine their relative contributions to performance of the chain. Septal rats primarily used response-produced cues, whereas normal animals randomly used the available cues. It was concluded that normal and septallesioned rats differed in their use of external and internal information, but in a direction opposite to that suggested by the literature. Ellen and Butter (1969) have demonstrated that the addition of a cue light significantly improves performance of rats with septal lesions on a task requiring low rates of responding (DRL). Since the cue light signals the end of the required delay of responding, they conclude that the septal deficit on DRL schedules is the result of an inability of these animals to use the response-produced, proprioceptive stimuli used by normal animals . We have demonstrated in our own laboratory (Mitchell & Kratz, Note 1) that, unlike normal rats, septal-lesioned rats which are deficient in two-bar ratio performance (Ellen & Kelnhofer, 1971) are facilitated by the addition of external cue lights. Srebro's (1974) study of retention deficits in successive position reversals indicates that the addition of a visual cue also improves performance of rats with septal lesions on this task. Srebro further shows that the saliency of the visual cue with respect to its correlation with the position reversal will systematically improve performance on the task as saliency increases. Thomas (1972), in a thorough investigation of spontaneous alternation, was able to determine that rats with septal lesions consistently choose to respond to external sensory rather than internal somatomotor cues. Each of these studies demonstrates the septal-damaged animal's increased dependency on external information and support Ellen and Butter's hypothesis. In agreement with this hypothesis, reviews by Lubar and Numan (1973) and Caplan (1973) produced cues. A number of studies, however, indicate that rather than being deficient in their use of internal information, animals with septal area lesions are quite efficient in their use of these types of cues. Van Hoesen, MacDougall, and Mitchell (1972) have shown that animals with septal lesions are more efficient than normal animals on a two-bar ratio schedule where a high response output is required . Morgan and Mitchell (1969) and Sodetz (1970) have shown that rats with septal lesions are superior to normal animals when performing on a Sidman avoidance schedule. Since performance on these tasks presumably requires the use of responseproduced cues, such findings are inconsistent with the notion that septal damage leads to a deficit in the use of response-...