Janus C
Sub-Department of Animal Behaviour, Cambridge University, Madingley, United Kingdom.
Behav Neural Biol. 1989 Nov;52(3):430-6. doi: 10.1016/s0163-1047(89)90577-3.
Groups of pups, aged 2, 4, 6, 12, 16, and 18 days of the precocial murid rodent spiny mouse (Acomys cahirinus), were each exposed for 1.5 h to one of the experimental odors, cinnamon or cumin, present in the surrounding environment. The odors were not contingent upon home-cage odors or any other reinforcers. This simple exposure produced a strong preference for the exposed odor in multichoice preference tests carried out 48 h after the exposure in pups from groups aged 2 through 16 days. Older pups exposed to cinnamon or cumin at Day 18 did not show a significant preference for the familiar odor. Both experimental odors used were found to be neutral for control experimentally naive pups within a tested age span. These results point at a stimulus familiarity, rather than associative learning in the development of olfactory preferences in young spiny mouse pups.
将早产的群居啮齿动物刺毛鼠（埃及刺毛鼠）2日龄、4日龄、6日龄、12日龄、16日龄和18日龄的幼崽每组分别暴露于周围环境中存在的一种实验气味（肉桂或孜然）1.5小时。这些气味与笼内气味或任何其他强化物无关。这种简单的暴露在暴露后48小时对2至16日龄组的幼崽进行的多项选择偏好测试中产生了对所暴露气味的强烈偏好。在第18天暴露于肉桂或孜然的较大幼崽对熟悉的气味没有表现出明显的偏好。在所测试的年龄范围内，发现两种实验气味对未经实验的对照幼崽都是中性的。这些结果表明，在幼小刺毛鼠幼崽嗅觉偏好的发展中，起作用的是刺激熟悉度，而非联想学习。
