Spaced initial stimulus familiarization enhances novelty preference in Long-Evans rats.

Full Abstract

Berlyne [Berlyne, D.E., 1950. Novelty and curiosity as determinants of exploratory behaviour. Brit. J. Psychol. 41, 68-80] first illustrated that rats prefer to explore novel objects over ones with which they have had previous experience. Recently, variants on this novel object recognition (NOR) task have become widely popular and have been employed in numerous neuroscience and behavioral pharmacological studies investigating memory processes. Given this popularity, a thorough understanding of the various behavioral processes involved in novelty reaction and preference is essential. The current study compared the effects of spaced and massed initial stimulus exposures upon later object exploration and novel stimulus preference in Long-Evans rats. Results illustrated that a distributed initial stimulus familiarization procedure promoted greater novel object preference than did a massed procedure, and suggest that the novel object recognition task is sensitive to spacing effects in a similar fashion to more traditional learning paradigms. The mechanisms underlying such spacing effects are briefly discussed.

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Author information

Author/s: Anderson, Matthew J (MJ); Jablonski, Sarah A (SA); Klimas, Diana B (DB);

Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Saint Joseph's University, 5600 City Avenue, Philadelphia, PA 19131, United States. mjanderson101(-atsign-)hotmail.com

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article

Journal: Behavioural processes (Behav Processes), published in Netherlands. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Jul; vol 78 (issue 3) : pp 481-6

Dates: Created 2008/05/12; Completed 2008/08/12;

PMID: 18358637, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Animals
Behavior, Animal - physiology
Exploratory Behavior - physiology
Habituation, Psychophysiologic - physiology
Male

Memory - physiology
Rats
Rats, Long-Evans
Recognition (Psychology) - physiology
Spatial Behavior - physiology

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