A Novel Contextual Dimension for Use With an Operant Chamber

From Simple to Hierarchical Forms of Learning

Ward-Robinson, Jasper
Honey, R. C.

¹School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom.

²Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jasper Ward-Robinson, School of Psychology, Cardiff University, Tower Building, Park Place, Cardiff CF10 3YG, Wales, United Kingdom. Electronic mail may be sent to [email protected] or to [email protected].

We thank Professor John Morton for some observations that prompted this research and Howard Thomas for his help in designing and constructing the novel aspects of our operant chambers. This work was funded by grants from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council, and it was conducted when R. C. Honey was a Royal Society University Research Fellow.

Received Date: November 19, 1999; Revised Date: March 14, 2000; Accepted Date: March 14, 2000

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes 26(3):p 358-363, July 2000.

A novel procedure is described in which the floor temperatures (warm and cool) in an operant chamber are used as contextual cues in 2 experiments with rats. Experiment 1 demonstrated that rats learn the relationship between these thermal contexts and auditory stimuli that have been paired with them. Experiment 2 showed that thermal contexts can serve a conditional function that (a) reflects the operation of a mechanism that is common to conventional, visual contexts and (b) is bound to these contexts' ability to retrieve the nature of the relationship between the auditory stimuli and food.