Factors modulating social influence on spatial choice in rats.

Abstract

Three experiments examined the conditions under which the spatial choices of rats searching for food are influenced by the choices made by other rats. Model rats learned a consistent set of baited locations in a 5 × 5 matrix of locations, some of which contained food. In Experiment 1, subject rats could determine the baited locations after choosing 1 location because all of the baited locations were on the same side of the matrix during each trial (the baited side varied over trials). Under these conditions, the social cues provided by the model rats had little or no effect on the choices made by the subject rats. The lack of social influence on choices occurred despite a simultaneous social influence on rats' location in the testing arena (Experiment 2). When the outcome of the subject rats' own choices provided no information about the positions of other baited locations, on the other hand, social cues strongly controlled spatial choices (Experiment 3). These results indicate that social information about the location of food influences spatial choices only when those cues provide valid information that is not redundant with the information provided by other cues. This suggests that social information is learned about, processed, and controls behavior via the same mechanisms as other kinds of stimuli.

Five on one side: Personal and social information in spatial choice

“…In fact, the choices made by the Subject Rats were strongly controlled by the choices of the Model Rats in this experiment. The results of the experiments reported by Bisbing et al (2015) considered as a whole strongly suggest that social information was used to locate food by the Subject Rats only when personal information (the outcome of the Subject Rats' own choices) did not specify the remaining baited locations. It suggests that social information controls behavior only when it is not redundant with personal information.…”

“…Under these conditions, rats tended to avoid visits to locations that had been previously visited (and thereby depleted of food) by the other rat, just as they do in the radial-arm maze. Bisbing et al (2015) reported four experiments using the Pit Maze. All of them involved a procedure in which only a subset of the 25 locations was baited on each trial.…”

“…Thus, the Model Rat potentially provided social information to the Subject Rat about the locations of food during a particular trial and the key question was the extent to which this information controlled the choices made by the Subject Rats. When all of the pits on one side of the arena were baited with a single food pellet and the pits on the other side of the arena were not baited (Bisbing et al, 2015, Experiments 1 and 2), Model Rats quickly learned to restrict their choices to the pits on the baited side of the arena. Subject Rats, for which the baited side of the arena varied unpredictably, quickly learned to locate the baited side of the arena after making a single choice.…”

“…More recently, work from our laboratory has examined social influences on spatial choices made in an open field task with a matrix of discreet choice locations, known as the Pit Maze (Bisbing, 2015;Keller and Brown, 2011). The apparatus consists of a 5 × 5 matrix of locations ("pits") in which food can be hidden under covers that must be lifted by the rat to determine whether food is available in the location.…”

“…In the experiments of Bisbing et al (2015), primary control of spatial choices was either by personal information or by social information. Can both kinds of information jointly or flexibly control spatial choices?…”