Summary
The procedure described here involves training an animal to make steady contact with a reward spout in order to receive food or water and then pairing a stimulus with mild electric shock delivered through the spout. The animal quickly learns to avoid the shock by breaking contact with the spout whenever it detects the stimulus. The breaking of contact with the spout is then used to indicate that the animal detected the stimulus. This procedure can be used to assess sensory and perceptual abilities in a wide variety of animals.
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Heffner, R.S., & Heffner, H.E. (1988). Sound localization in a predatory rodent, the northern grasshopper mouse (Onychomys leucogaster). Journal of Comparative Psychology, 102, 66–71.
Masterton, R.B., & Granger, E.M. (1988). Role of the acoustic striae in hearing: Contribution of dorsal and intermediate striae to detection of noises and tones. Journal of Neurophysiology, 60, 1841–1860.
Thaw, A.K., & Smith, J.C. (1992). Conditioned suppression as a method of detecting taste thresholds in the rat. Chemical Senses, 17, 211–223.
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Heffner, H.E., Heffner, R.S. (1995). Conditioned Avoidance. In: Klump, G.M., Dooling, R.J., Fay, R.R., Stebbins, W.C. (eds) Methods in Comparative Psychoacoustics. BioMethods. Birkhäuser, Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-7463-2_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-0348-7463-2_8
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