Abstract
A hurdle-jump escape response was employed to assess the laboratory rat’s aversion or attraction to different types of conspecific odor. Odorant donor subjects received 112 runway acquisition trials on a continuous reward schedule followed by 32 extinction trials, 112 acquisition trials on a 50% schedule of reward and nonreward followed by 32 extinction trials, or 144 “neutral” trials with no reward in the alley. Different groups of test subjects escaped from odor excreted by odorant subjects on (a) nonrewarded acquisition and extinction trials, (b) rewarded trials during continuous reinforcement, (c) rewarded trials during partial reinforcement, or (d) neutral trials; others escaped from a clean box. The principal findings were: (1) significant aversion to “odor of nonreward” appeared after the donor odorants had received 12 exposures to reward; (2) production of odor of nonreward by odorant subjects changed as a function of training experience with reward; (3) after repeated exposure to odor of nonreward, the escape response habituated; (4) greater or different odor excretion in extinction resulted from subjects trained on a continuous reward schedule than on a partial reward schedule. Relationships of the data to frustration theory were discussed, assuming that inferred differences in production of odor reflect differences in frustration reaction.
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This research was supported in part by U.S. Public Health Service Grant MH 13314 and by the Texas Christian University Research Foundation. This article is based, in part, on the first author’s dissertation submitted to Texas Christian University in partial fulfillment of the PhD Degree.
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Collerain, I., Ludvigson, H.W. Hurdle-jump responding in the rat as a function of conspecific odor of reward and nonreward. Animal Learning & Behavior 5, 177–183 (1977). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03214075
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03214075