Ontogenesis of learning: VI. Learned and unlearned responses to visual stimulation in the infant hooded rat

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Abstract
A Pavlovian fear conditioning procedure was used to examine the ontogeny of the hooded rats' learned responses to visual stimulation. The data suggests a dissociation in the emergence of the processes required to detect visual events and those necessary for learning an association between visual stimulation and shock. Pups did not condition to a visual conditioned stimulus (CS) paired with a shock unconditioned stimulus (US) until they were 17 days old, even though 15‐day‐olds were clearly able to detect the visual CS. Although 15‐day‐olds failed to condition to the visual CS, they conditioned successfully when an auditory CS was paired with shock. Thus, the 15‐day‐olds' failure to condition to the visual CS was not due to a performance deficit or to a general ineffectiveness of shock as an US. These data suggest that the components of the visual system that mediate detection and those required for associative learning mature sequentially.