Spatial conditional discrimination learning in developing rats

Brown, Kevin L.; Pagani, Jerome H.; Stanton, Mark E.

doi:10.1002/dev.20044

Cited by 12 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(58 reference statements)

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“…The ability to use the combined Texture Maze cue and the Maze-alone cue while failing to use the Texture cue by itself suggests that developing rats are less sensitive to some types of more subtle contextual cue dimensions. The idea that the mesh cue used in this study is less salient than the maze cue is supported by the finding that mesh discriminations are more slowly acquired than position discriminations (Brown et al, 2004; Experiment 2) and that maze cues are effective cues for a conditional discrimination whereas mesh cues are not (Brown et al, 2004; Experiment 1). Whether rats of the ages tested are able to use some other, more salient intramaze cue as an aid during reversal learning remains to be determined.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Contextual modulation of spatial discrimination reversal in developing rats

2004

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Reversal of discrimination learning is influenced by manipulation of the training context. In adult and developing rats, contextual changes made between acquisition and reversal aid the learning of the new discrimination, possibly by serving to release proactive interference from the originally acquired discrimination (M. E. Bouton & D. C. Brooks, 1993; N. Spear, G. Smith, R. Bryan, & W. Gordon, 1980). The present study sought to examine this effect in an appetitive T-maze task, as a function of different contextual manipulations. Rats of three ages, Postnatal Day (PND) 19, PND23, and PND30, were tested for their ability to acquire and reverse a position habit in a T-maze. Contextual changes were made between acquisition and reversal sessions and consisted of one of three manipulations: (a) texture; the texture of the maze floor was changed via the addition or subtraction of wire mesh; (b) maze; subjects were reversed in a different maze that was identical in construction to the training maze, but differed in spatial location; (c) texture and maze; subjects were shifted to the new maze, the floor of which differed in texture from the training maze but was otherwise identical in construction. Results showed that the texture-maze combination was an effective aid to reversal learning at all ages tested. The texture alone, however, was not effective at any age. The maze alone also was an effective cue for reversal, but proved to have the greatest effect for PND30 subjects. During ontogeny, the contextual modulation of reversal learning is importantly influenced by the nature and the salience of the contextual cue.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 69%

Contextual modulation of spatial discrimination reversal in developing rats

2004

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“…However, many species have been shown capable of conditional discrimination learning including rats (Brown, Pagani, & Stanton, 2005), octopuses and cuttlefishes (Hvorecny et al, 2007), and chimpanzees (Dugdale & Lowe, 2000). Thomas and Kerr (1976) used the same colors (black and white) to successfully train squirrel monkeys on a conditional discrimination task in which the monkeys were rewarded for selecting odd objects when presented with a white tray and were rewarded for selecting non-odd objects when presented with a black tray.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) fail to learn abstract cues of differential outcomes in a novel cognitive bias test

McGuire¹,

Vonk²

2018

AB&C

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Citation - McGuire, M.C., & Vonk, J. (2018). Gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) fail to learn abstract cues of differential outcomes in a novel cognitive bias test. Animal Behavior and Cognition, 5(1) Abstract -In order to assess mood state in three male western lowland gorillas housed in a bachelor group, we developed a novel version of a cognitive bias task. The background color of a touchscreen presented a conditional 'if, then…" rule relating to outcomes involving differential amounts of food rewards. The gorillas struggled to reach a criterion of 80% responding required for testing. In follow-up experiments, we assessed whether the gorillas did in fact prefer three pieces of food to one piece of food when presented with images of food quantities and actual food quantities. Gorillas did not learn to select the stimulus that indicated three food items over one food item when we used images of actual quantities of the rewarded food but they did prefer three actual pieces of food. Thus, like other primates, gorillas may respond differently to quantities of edible and inedible items. In addition, they may struggle with learning conditional discriminations when cues to differential responses and outcomes are arbitrary rather than intuitively connected. These studies highlight the importance of methodology when devising tests to assess cognition or affect in nonhuman primates.

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“…Furthermore, our results suggest that PD17 rats are unlikely to integrate distal spatial cues into their acquired representations of the contexts. Together, these data suggest that PD17 rats may use a different contextual learning strategy to perform the OiC task compared to postweanling rats, as is observed in other behavioral paradigms such as conditional discrimination [46]. Importantly, proximal- versus distal-cue utilization is likely to influence the neurobiology of task performance and thereby affect the ontogeny of behavior in spatial learning paradigms, including the OiC task (see below).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontogeny of object-in-context recognition in the rat

Ramsaran

Westbrook

Stanton

2016

Behavioural Brain Research

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The object-in-context recognition (OiC) task [19] is a spontaneous exploration task that serves as an index of incidental contextual learning and memory. During the test phase, rats prefer to explore the object mismatched to the testing context based on previous object-context pairings experienced during training. The mechanisms of OiC memory have been explored in adult rats [12, 35]; however, little is known about its determinants during development. Thus, the present study examined the ontogeny of the OiC task in preweanling through adolescent rats. We demonstrate that postnatal day (PD) 17, 21, 26, and 31 rats can perform the OiC Task (Experiment 1) and that preference for the novel target is eliminated when rats are tested in an alternate context not encountered during training (Experiment 2). Lastly, we show that PD26 but not PD17 rats can perform the OiC task when the training contexts only differed by distal spatial cues (Experiment 3). These data demonstrate for the first time that PD17 rats can acquire and retain short-term OiC memory, which involves conjunctive learning of object and context information. However, we also provide evidence that preweanling rats’ ability to utilize certain aspects of a context (i.e., distal spatial cues) in the OiC task is not equivalent to that of their older counterparts. Implications for the development of contextual memory and its related neural substrates are discussed.

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Spatial conditional discrimination learning in developing rats

Cited by 12 publications

References 42 publications

Contextual modulation of spatial discrimination reversal in developing rats

Contextual modulation of spatial discrimination reversal in developing rats

Gorillas (Gorilla gorilla gorilla) fail to learn abstract cues of differential outcomes in a novel cognitive bias test

Ontogeny of object-in-context recognition in the rat

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