Frustration increases the incentive value of an expected reward

CUENYA, L. ; SERAFINI, M. ; MUSTACA, A. E.

Bogota

Congreso; 17th Biennial Meeting of the International Society for Comparative Psychology; 2014

International Society of Comparative Psychology

The consummatory Successive Negative Contrast (cSNC) is a protocol for studying frustration responses in animal models. It consists of exposing an experimental group to a high-magnitude reinforce (e.g., 32% sucrose solution) and then change it to a low-magnitude reward (e.g., 4%). This produces an abrupt suppression of consummatory response in the experimental group compared to a control group that always receives the low-magnitude reward. We studied the effect of frustration on the incentive value of an expected reward. Male Wistar adults rats were used (n = 42). The training consisted of 5 daily trials of 5 min each (preshift phase), followed by a session of two consecutive trials, 2 and 3 min respectively. The dependent variable was the goal tracking time. The experimental conditions were (numbers indicate the solution received in each phase): 32-4-32, 4-4-32, 32-32-32, and 4-4j-32 (to match the group 32-4-32). As expected, we observed an increase in goal tracking time in the 32-4-32 group compared to the other groups in the last experimental trial. This result is interpreted as a positive contrast and suggests that re-experiencing the high-magnitude reward while undergoing a frustration state may increase the incentive value of the expected reward.