One-Trial Object Recognition by Rats

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Abstract
Four experiments examined the ability of rats to solve problems analogous to those used with primates, where they were required to remember an object seen on a single trial. In the first experiment, rats were rewarded for selecting the novel of two goal boxes in a Y-maze (nonmatching). Different pairs of goal boxes were used for every trial within a session in order to increase the salience of the positive stimulus and to exclude the use of odour trails. The animals rapidly learnt this one-trial object recognition task and performed well above chance after retention intervals as long as 120 sec. A control experiment confirmed that the rats could not use spatial cues to solve the task. A third experiment showed that rats could also learn to select the familiar of two boxes in a one-trial test of object matching. In the final experiment the rats were unable to acquire a win–stay/lose–shift strategy when tested in a comparable manner.

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