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Ontogeny of object versus location recognition in the rat: Acquisition and retention effects
Author(s) -
Westbrook Sara R.,
Brennan Lauren E.,
Stanton Mark E.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
developmental psychobiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.055
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1098-2302
pISSN - 0012-1630
DOI - 10.1002/dev.21232
Subject(s) - novelty , ontogeny , recognition memory , object (grammar) , psychology , memory retention , cognitive neuroscience of visual object recognition , memoria , neuroscience , artificial intelligence , cognition , biology , computer science , endocrinology , social psychology
Novel object and location recognition tasks harness the rat's natural tendency to explore novelty (Berlyne, 1950) to study incidental learning. The present study examined the ontogenetic profile of these two tasks and retention of spatial learning between postnatal day (PD) 17 and 31. Experiment 1 showed that rats ages PD17, 21, and 26 recognize novel objects, but only PD21 and PD26 rats recognize a novel location of a familiar object. These results suggest that novel object recognition develops before PD17, while object location recognition emerges between PD17 and PD21. Experiment 2 studied the ontogenetic profile of object location memory retention in PD21, 26, and 31 rats. PD26 and PD31 rats retained the object location memory for both 10‐min and 24‐hr delays. PD21 rats failed to retain the object location memory for the 24‐hr delay, suggesting differential development of short‐ versus long‐term memory in the ontogeny of object location memory. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc . Dev Psychobiol 56: 1492–1506, 2014.