CONDITIONED PLACE PREFERENCE IN 12-DAY-OLD JAPANESE-QUAIL

Four experiments assessed the ability of 12-day-old Japanese quail to learn a conditioned place preference (CPP). In Experiment 2, immature quail learned to prefer a place pared with normal food over a place pa ired with tainted food. Experiment 2 indicated that this kind of learn ing can be achieved with as few as 2 days of training. It was discover -ed in Experiment 3 that place preferences can be established with exp osure to only one hedonic event. Quail learned to prefer a chamber pai red with either normal food or tainted food over chamber that did not contain a hedonic stimulus. Experiment 4 successfully replicated the 2 -day normal-food-induced place preference in the previous experiment, while also showing that mere context exposure is not sufficient to pro duce CPP. (C) 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.