RATS MEMORY FOR SERIALLY PRESENTED NOVEL FLAVORS - EVIDENCE FOR NONSPATIAL PRIMACY EFFECTS

Four experiments examined the effects of serially presenting a number of novel flavours to rats on their subsequent consumption of those fla vours. In Experiments 1-4, rats were orally infused with 0.5 mi of fla vour over 30 sec for each of five flavours in the exposure phase of th e experiment. In these studies, primacy and recency effects emerged, t he size of the primacy effect being related to the length of the reten tion interval, which varied from zero to twenty-four hours. Thus, both primacy and recency effects can be generated using nonspatial stimuli with rats.