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Signalled and unsignalled avoidance impairments following noradrenaline depletion with DSP4: An hypothesis incorporating and associative and a non‐associative factor
Author(s) -
ARCHER TREVOR
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
scandinavian journal of psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.743
H-Index - 72
eISSN - 1467-9450
pISSN - 0036-5564
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9450.1983.tb00478.x
Subject(s) - psychology , associative learning , audiology , associative property , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , medicine , mathematics , pure mathematics
Four experiments were performed to investigate the effect of a single prior administration of the selective noradrenaline neurotoxin, DSP4 (50 md/kg, i.p.), upon signalled and unisgnalled variations of the two‐way active avoidance procedure. Noradrenaline depletio following DSP4 caused a significant impairment in the acquisition but not in the retention of signalled avoidance. Two unsignalled discrete trial avoidance procedures were used, one of which the 50/10 procedure, was designed to be considerably more difficult than the other, the 50/40 procedure. DSP4‐ treated rats were found to be impaired on the difficult 50/10 task but not on the 50/40 task. It was also shown that the DSP4 group in the 50/10 experiment made fewer crossings that did not result in shock postponement (‘nonreinforced’ or intertrial crossings) while in the 50/40 experiment the DSP4 group in the 50/10 experiment made fewer crossings that did not result in shock postponement (‘nonreinforced’ or ‘intertrial’ crossings) while in the 50/40 experiment the DSPS group made more ‘intertrial’ crossings. Response latencies were not significantly altered as a result of the treatment in both instances. The results of the present experiments in conjunction with much accumulate evidence from several other investigations were assimilated in order to develop an hypothesis to account for the consistent signalled two‐way avoidance deficits resulting from DSP4 administration. This hypothesis incorporates two main components: (1) It may be that DSP4‐treated rats are unable to develop the correct coping behaviour required in the stressful task confronting it, i.e. they fail to make the appropriate crossing (running) respose whether an escape or an avoidance response; (2) It is possible that DSP4‐treated rats may fail to associate adequately a successful avoidance response with either the tone that signals shock or the postponement of shock.