EFFECTS OF ISOLATION REARING AND MIRROR EXPOSURE ON SOCIAL AND ASOCIAL DISCRIMINATION PERFORMANCE

Four experiments examined the effects of rearing in isolation on rats performance on discrimination-based and social learning tasks. After d emonstrating that the rearing procedures produced similar results in a n open field task to those previously established (Experiment 1), rats were subjected to two discrimination tasks: an instrumental occasion setting procedure (Experiment 3) and a nonspatial win-stay/lose-shift versus win-shift/lose-stay procedure (Experiment 4). Deficits in acqui sition of the necessary discriminations were noted in the rats raised in isolation, but there were no differences between isolation-reared a nd socially reared subjects in response acquisition per se. In Experim ent 2, rats were presented with an observational learning task using t he bidirectional control procedure. Socially reared rats had a tendenc y to imitate the behavior they had observed, but rats raised in isolat ion performed the opposite behavior to that observed, indicating a fai lure to use a conspecific as a reference point in the task. The presen ce of a mirror during rearing in isolation was also investigated, but was found to have little effect in attenuating the above deficits in b ehavior. (C) 1996 Academic Press, Inc.