Competition of alternative paths in behaviour

N.N. Shuikin and I.P. Levshina

Institute of Higher Nervous Activity and Neurophysiology, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia

The task of the choice between alternative options may be difficult for an animal if there is equality of alternatives. We tested the behaviour of rats in the Y-maze that consisted of a starting room with initially closed starting gate and a 'centre' (hall) with two identical outlets, guiding into safe shelters. There was an electrical floor in the starting place and in the 'centre'. The rats (n=7) were trained to forsake the starting place by the opening the starting gate and to go into one of the shelters. Usually, an animal preferred one of the safe shelters (left or right). Next, tests were accomplished with switching off the current. Every test was finished by the rough handling of the rat from the 'safe shelter' and returning it into the starting room. Thus the safety of the preferred shelter became less obvious for the rat, and after several tests the rat remained in the 'centre', looked into the outlets, and looked round its choice. In this critical test the time of the action became extremely long: up to 45 s, while in the previous and consequent tests it was no more than 8 s. The significance of the result was 0.01. Sometimes after choosing one of the shelters the rat left for the other safe shelter. One of animals couldn't decide the delivered task and returned to the starting gate, searching it.

Alternative paths of the active avoidance are the elements of the object contents of motivation. Our experiments allow us to evaluate the competition of the object components of motivation.


Poster presented at Measuring Behavior 2000, 3rd International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 15-18 August 2000, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

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