Universidad de Deusto.
Psicothema. 2021 Nov;33(4):617-622. doi: 10.7334/psicothema2021.164.
One issue that has received relatively little attention in the analyses of the neophobic responses to a novel flavor is the influence of the context in which the flavor is first encountered, along with the effect of this context on the habituation of neophobia when the flavor is repeatedly consumed. Considering the predictions of the Contextual Safety Hypothesis, which proposes that the previous appetitive or aversive history of the context will modulate the intensity of neophobia and its habituation, we designed an experiment to evaluate the role played by the context in neophobia and its habituation to a new flavor.
Male Wistar rats had access to a new flavor solution (0.1% sacharin) in presence of a context previously submitted to a treatment intended to turn it into appetitive, aversive or merely familiar. An additional group of rats received the new flavor in their home cages.
After four days of saccharin exposure, those animals in the Appetitive and Home conditions showed significant faster neophobia habituation as compared to those in the Aversive and Familiar groups.
These results revealed the potential applied value of using contextual manipulations to promote healthy eating behavior both in animals and humans.
在对新口味产生恐惧反应的分析中，有一个问题相对较少受到关注，即口味首次出现的环境的影响，以及这种环境对重复食用该口味时的恐惧习惯的影响。考虑到情境安全假说的预测，即先前的环境的食欲或厌恶历史将调节恐惧和其习惯化的强度，我们设计了一个实验来评估情境在新口味的恐惧和习惯化中所扮演的角色。
雄性 Wistar 大鼠可以接触到一种新的口味溶液（0.1% 蔗糖），同时还可以接触到一个之前经过处理的环境，这个环境被设计成令人愉悦、令人厌恶或仅仅是熟悉的。另一组大鼠则在自己的笼子里接受新的口味。
在四天的蔗糖暴露后，处于令人愉悦和家庭环境中的动物与处于令人厌恶和熟悉环境中的动物相比，表现出更快的蔗糖恐惧习惯化。
这些结果揭示了使用情境操纵来促进动物和人类的健康饮食行为的潜在应用价值。
