Abstract
Rats shocked once by a stationary, wire-wrapped prod bury it if suitable materials are available. Does this conditioned defensive burying occur when rats have the opportunity to flee from the source of aversive stimulation, or is it limited to situations such as those in which it had previously been studied—those in which the relatively small test chamber confined each rat to the immediate vicinity of the prod? In the present experiments, the capacity of rats to flee from the shock prod was enhanced by increasing the floor dimensions of the test chamber up to 200X80 cm (Experiment 1) or by providing the rats with an opportunity to seek refuge in a separate, safe compartment (Experiment 2). Although both of these modifications to the usual conditioned-defensive-burying paradigm significantly reduced the duration of burying and the height of the accumulated mounds, burying remained well above control levels in all experimental conditions.
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Pinel, J. P. J., Treit, D., & Wilkie, D. M.Constraints on avoidance learning: Burying an unfounded assumption. Paper presented at the Northeastern Regional meeting of the Animal Behavior Society, St. John’s, Newfoundland, 1977.
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This research was supported by a National Research Council of Canada grant awarded to John Pinel.
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Pinel, J.P.J., Treit, D., Ladak, F. et al. Conditioned defensive burying in rats free to escape. Animal Learning & Behavior 8, 447–451 (1980). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199632
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03199632