The influence of early experience on the frustration effect.

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Abstract
To test the effect of early experience in relation to food-getting on the magnitude of the frustration effect, three independent variables were manipulated from the birth of 40 hooded rats until the time of testing in a double-runway apparatus. These were: the size of the litter in which S was raised; differential frustrative-feeding procedures carried out in a feeding apparatus clearly discriminable from S''s home environment; and no-food-present vs. food-present-but-inaccessible in the first goal box of the double-runway apparatus on nonreward trials. In preliminary test, a stabilimeter apparatus was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the activity-inactivity training procedure. The results of the main test in the double runway indicated that: (a) Training hungry Ss to be active or inactive in relation to food-getting does not appear to "transfer" to the double-runway situation so as to influence the magnitude of the FE either in Ss raised in large or in small litters. (b) In the testing period, food-not-present on nonreward trials produced an immediate and continued FE in all groups run under this condition (c) The presence of inaccessible food on nonreward trials appears to produce an initial increase in running times, and an apparent reversal of the FE in Runway 2. This reversal is temporary and by Day 6 of the testing period the usual FE appears clearly in all groups of this condition.
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