Olfactory stimulus control in the rat

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Abstract
Discrimination training in which introduction of S− was preceded by 250 S + trials resulted in errorless learning in rats trained to discriminate between two odors or tones versus lights, but not in those trained to discriminate between two lights or two tones. In a second study rats were trained to discriminate odor, lights, or lights versus tones and then given a series of 10 successive discrimination reversals. Only rats trained with odors showed positive transfer on the first reversal and acquisition of a learning-set. These results, together with those of others, indicate that rats show exceptionally rapid acquisition of operant discriminations when trained with odors and that this performance superiority is probably because odors provide more salient cues than do tones or lights.

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