P. Reed et al., EFFECTS OF ISOLATION REARING AND MIRROR EXPOSURE ON SOCIAL AND ASOCIAL DISCRIMINATION PERFORMANCE, Learning and motivation, 27(2), 1996, pp. 113-129
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.