Reply to Sheldon

Lester, David

doi:10.3758/bf03342411

Cited by 2 publications

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“…One of the factors was labeled "Field Exploration" because it is most heavily loaded by the activity measures. However, as activity scores have also been used as measures of fearfulness (e.g., Hall, 1941;King, 1970;Lester, 1968b), they are difficult to interpret-particularly in studies designed to elucidate the relationshp between emotionality and exploratory behavior. For example, if we view activity as a measure of emotionality (perhaps reflecting "freezing behavior"), then the 2 factors might be interpreted as indicating that activity measures of emotionality tend to correlate more highly with one another than with other measures of emotionality (e.g., ratings and food consumption in a novel environment).…”

Section: Aitkenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early experience, emotionality, and exploration in the rat: A critique of Whimbey and Denenberg's hypothesis

Aitken

1974

Developmental Psychobiology

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Section: Aitkenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Early experience, emotionality, and exploration in the rat: A critique of Whimbey and Denenberg's hypothesis

Aitken

1974

Developmental Psychobiology

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Reply to Dr. Lester

Sheldon

1968

Psychon Sci

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Lester's interesting reply (1968) to the criticisms I offered (Sheldon, 1968) of his report (Lester, 1967) on differences in the behavior of rats in an elevated and an enclosed maze seems to me to leave some points unanswered.(I) It now appears (Lester, 1968) that arm entry scores (lower in the elevated than in the enclosed maze) were taken not as a measure of exploration, but as support for the "assumption that elevated mazes increase the fear level of rats compared to enclosed mazes." But my criticism of the appropriateness of any comparison based on these scores holds. The difficulty is that elevated and enclosed mazes Differ in more than their presumed capacity to arouse fear. Because they confront the animal with different sets of stimuli (and that is all I meant by "different sensory environments") they may give rise to different forms of exploratory behavior. It is possible, then, that activity in an elevated maze is lower not because rats are more frightened but because they are engaged in a form of exploration that reduces the number of sections 284 entered. I thought that I had presented some evidence for this explanation, and incidentally acquitted myself on any charge of anthropomorphism, by showing (Sheldon, 1968) that rats in an elevated maze spent one-third of their time in an activity that is impossible in an enclosed maze and has every appearance of being exploratory.(2) Lester argues that it was the differences in initial alternation scores that were the critical evidence for his theory, and that as far as his predictions about alternation are concerned it does not matter whether the animal is attending to intramaze or extramaze cues. But if animals in an elevated maze are responding to extramaze cues, an alternation measure derived from arm entries is no longer appropriate. A rat could alternate with respect to extramaze cues without alternating between maze arms.

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Reply to Sheldon

Cited by 2 publications

References 10 publications

Early experience, emotionality, and exploration in the rat: A critique of Whimbey and Denenberg's hypothesis

Early experience, emotionality, and exploration in the rat: A critique of Whimbey and Denenberg's hypothesis

Reply to Dr. Lester

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