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| Operant Acquisition and Operant Conditioning |
| Monday, September 30, 2019 |
| 3:00 PM–3:50 PM |
| Stockholm Waterfront Congress Centre, Level 2, C4 |
| Area: EAB |
| Instruction Level: Basic |
| Chair: todd m myers (PENDING) |
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| Variations in Chamber Acclimation and Magazine Training Impact Autoshaping and Operant Performance |
| Domain: Basic Research |
| TODD M MYERS (U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense), Nathan Rice (USAMRICD) |
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| Abstract: Magazine training is promulgated to be essential for hastening operant acquisition by establishing the food-correlated stimulus as a conditioned reinforcer for criterion lever-press responses and to also serve as a discriminative stimulus for prompt food retrieval, further enhancing temporal contiguity between the operant response and primary reinforcer. However, this assumption has not been verified via extensive empirical investigation. Therefore, we examined acquisition of operant lever pressing and performance under ratio and interval schedules in male Sprague-Dawley rats (n=284) as a function of varying pre-exposure conditions: no pre-exposure to the chamber or food pellets, pre-exposure to the chamber without food pellets, pre-exposure to the chamber with food pellets already in the pellet trough, or classic magazine training (intermittent food pellet delivery accompanied by the food-correlated stimulus). Several measures of learning corroborated the presumed benefits of magazine training, however, simple pre-exposure to the chamber with pellets in the magazine also promoted acquisition above the more limited pre-exposure conditions. Importantly, all subjects attained comparable levels of performance as training progressed, with terminal performance levels (on the variable-interval 90-s schedule) indistinguishable across all groups. The theoretical and practical relevance of these findings will be discussed. |
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