INIMEC - CONICET   05467
INSTITUTO DE INVESTIGACION MEDICA MERCEDES Y MARTIN FERREYRA
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Context-dependent learning in preweanling rats using an instrumental conditioning paradigm
Autor/es:
ORELLANA E; ARIAS C; ABATE P; GONZALEZ F
Lugar:
Sevilla
Reunión:
Congreso; XXVII Congreso Internacional de la Sociedad Española de Psicología Comparada (SEPC); 2015
Institución organizadora:
Spanish Society for Comparative Psychology
Resumen:
Contextual learning during early ontogeny is a topic that hasgenerated controversy in recent decades. Some authors considerthat learning is context-independent at this stage, the deficitbeing attributed to immaturity of the hippocampal system at thisage. However, ecological research adapted to infant capabilitiesshows the opposite. Contextual learning during infancy hasprimarily been addressed using Pavlovian conditioning. Thepresent work aims to study this problem using an instrumentallearning paradigm (nose-poking). Preweanling rats wereconditioned during postnatal days (PDs) 16-17, using chocolatemilk as the reinforcer. Animals were tested on an extinction trialat PD18, either in a different context or in the same context usedduring training. Infants tested in the same context had a higherinstrumental response rate than the alternative group during theinitial minutes of the test. In addition, latency to respond waslower in the first group compared to the later one. This pattern ofresults seems to support the hypothesis that learning during earlystages of development might be context-dependent, and thatthis context-dependency can also be observed in an instrumentallearning procedure.