Abstract
Thirsty rats were tested on a four-armed radial maze with three water locations and one distinctive taste location (saccharin). Rats that were injected with lithium chloride after drinking a novel saccharin solution visited the saccharin location less than did unpoisoned animals, primarily during the later portions of the test sessions. When saccharin was moved to a different location, previously poisoned rats rapidly avoided the new saccharin location and increased visits to the original saccharin location, now rebaited with water. A similar pattern of learned avoidance and approach was obtained in Experiment 2 with three water locations and one vacant location (no water). These results indicate that: (1) sampling the contents of alternative patches mediates both learning to avoid the location of an aversive substance and returning to a newly viable patch, and (2) avoiding the location of a novel substance after a single poisoning occurs because the location does not contain an edible substance, not because of an aversion conditioned to environmental cues.
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This research was supported, in part, by National Science Foundation Grant 82-10139 to William Timberlake. Experiment 1 was part of a master’s thesis completed by the first author at San Francisco State University.
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Melcer, T., Timberlake, W. Poison avoidance and patch (location) selection in rats. Animal Learning & Behavior 13, 60–68 (1985). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213366
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03213366