Failure of sexual activity to reinforce female rats.

Bolles, Robert C.; Rapp, Harvey M.; White, G. Cary

doi:10.1037/h0025564

Cited by 33 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…This result is contrary to wh at would be expected if both social and sexual stimulus properties of the female contributed significantly to the copulatory patterns, as suggested by Bolles, Rapp, & White (1968). Thus, whereas the presence of a conspecific may serve as a reinforcer for an operant response some of the time (Angermeier, 1960), it is not an effective reinforcer during the bulk of the m. This could be due, in part, to Of the 32 possible comparisons (pre vs free, post vs free, Series 1 and 2 for eight free tests), 31 showed an increase in IF and a decrease in MUI during free tests.…”

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confidence: 56%

“…The complementary paradigm of requiring aresponse by the male for access to a receptive female would provide information conceming the following problems. Bolles, Rapp, & White (1968) have pointed out the potential confounding of the social and sexual stimulus aspects of the female in studies of sexual behavior. It is known that presentation of a conspecific can support instrumental behavior in rats (Angermeier, 1960), that pairs of rats in an open field remain closer together than would be expected by chance (Latane, Schneider, Waring, & Zweigenhaft, 1971), and that attention towards the female by the male, as measured by the frequency of sniffing, pursuit, and mounting, increases gradually during PEI (Dewsbury, 1967).…”

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confidence: 99%

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Copulatory behavior of male rats under an imposed operant requirement

et al. 1971

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confidence: 56%

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confidence: 99%

Copulatory behavior of male rats under an imposed operant requirement

et al. 1971

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“…Masculine sexual motivation has been studied in several different ways. These include (Stone et al, 1935) monitoring the willingness of male rats to cross an electrified grid to gain access to an estrous female, as well as latencies of males to approach an estrous female tethered in the goal box of a straight runway (Beach and Jordan, 1956;Bolles et al, 1968;Lopez et al, 1999). Another approach has been to require rats to press a lever in a Skinner box to gain access to an estrous female (Beck, 1971).…”

Section: Methods Of Studying Appetitive Versus Consummatory Componentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Neuroendocrinology of Male Reproductive Behavior

Baum¹

2007

Handbook of Neurochemistry and Molecular Neurobiology

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“…While some studies have used a runway to assess the behavior of female rats approaching a goal-box containing a male [18–21], these studies have typically been interested in sexual reinforcement or the consequences of copulation and not motivation per se (i.e., the antecedent state that induces the female to seek a male prior to copulation). Our current procedure was devised to assess female sexual motivation independent of sexual reinforcement by examining approach behavior to a male target rat located behind a perforated Plexiglas partition, and in an apparatus in which copulation has never occurred.…”

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The effects of sexual experience and estrus on male-seeking motivated behavior in the female rat

Nofrey

Rocha

López

et al. 2008

Physiology & Behavior

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Ovariectomized (OVX) female rats were trained to traverse a straight alley and return to a goal box where they had previously encountered a male rat, a female rat or an empty goal box. The time required to run the alley was used as an index of the subjects' motivation to re-engage the goal box target. Subjects were tested in both estrus and non-estrus, first sexually naïve and then again after sexual experience. Female rats ran most quickly for a male target, most slowly for an empty goal box, and at intermediate speeds for a female target. Sexual experience tended to slow run times for all but male targets. Estrus enhanced approach behavior for males and an empty goal box, but tended to slow the approach toward females, both before and after sexual experience. This latter finding was further investigated in a second experiment in which sexually naïve OVX females were tested during estrus and non-estrus in a locomotor activity apparatus, a runway with an empty goal box, and an open field. Estrus produced no changes in spontaneous locomotion either in the activity box or the open field, but decreased run times in the alley and increased the number of center-square entries in the open-field. Thus, estrus produces increases in sexual motivation that selectively enhance exploratory, presumably male-seeking behavior, but not simple spontaneous locomotion. Keywords sexual motivation; runway; female rats; sexual experience; copulation; estrus; progesterone; estrogen A great deal is known about the sexual behavior of the female rat. For instance, in his seminal work on estrous females, Beach [1] outlined and illustrated a distinction between appetitive and consummatory behaviors, or proceptivity and receptivity, respectively. Receptivity is most closely understood as those behaviors "… which are necessary and sufficient for fertile copulation with a potent male" [1]. Receptive behaviors are those that facilitate the act of copulation, female rats, for example, exhibit displays of lordosis characterized by a crouching, sway-backed posture, with the tail flicked to the side to facilitate the male mounting and intromitting. It is well known that sexual receptivity in the female rat is dependent on the presence of estrogen [e.g, see 2,3,4]. Proceptivity, on the other hand, represents an antecedent condition to the copulatory act. Here the female exhibits solicitation activity that is intended to attract and stimulate the male [1]. In rats, such proceptive behaviors include hopping and darting, ear wiggles, and other orientCorresponding Author: Aaron Ettenberg, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, Voice: 805.893.3682, Fax: 805.893.4303, Email: ettenberg@psych.ucsb In previous work we assessed the motivation of male rats to traverse a straight-alley and enter a goal box where several seconds earlier they had been exposed to one of a variety of target stimuli placed on the opposite side of a Plexiglas partition. Although researchers have long used the runway as a mean...

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Failure of sexual activity to reinforce female rats.

Cited by 33 publications

References 6 publications

Copulatory behavior of male rats under an imposed operant requirement

Copulatory behavior of male rats under an imposed operant requirement

Neuroendocrinology of Male Reproductive Behavior

The effects of sexual experience and estrus on male-seeking motivated behavior in the female rat

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