Means L W, Long M, Jones T A, Curtis W C
Department of Psychology, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27858, USA.
Physiol Behav. 1996 Nov;60(5):1239-45. doi: 10.1016/s0031-9384(96)00129-1.
Rats readily acquire water-escape spatial delayed matching-to-sample (DMTS) tasks and show excellent performance with retention intervals as long as 120 m (17). They also acquire the task more readily with a 5-min retention interval (RI) than with a 1-min RI (16). To determine if these observations are unique to spatial DMTS, or are also true of nonspatial water-escape DMTS, 75-day-old rats were compared on acquisition and subsequent retention of spatial and brightness DMTS. A larger proportion of the rats tested on the spatial problem were able to acquire the task, made fewer acquisition errors, and demonstrated better retention when tested at RIs of 1, 5, 15, 30, 60, and 120 min than did the rats tested on the brightness problem. Acquisition RI did not affect the rate of acquisition on either task. Examination of perserveration errors, the occurrence of intrusions, and position-congruent performance (escape platform in the same physical location on both runs of a trial) revealed that the choices of brightness-trained rats were often more influenced by spatial than brightness cues, suggesting that rats have an unlearned bias to use spatial cues in water-escape DMTS tasks.
大鼠很容易学会水逃避空间延迟样本匹配（DMTS）任务，并且在长达120分钟的延迟间隔下表现出色（17）。它们在5分钟延迟间隔（RI）下比在1分钟RI下更容易学会该任务（16）。为了确定这些观察结果是空间DMTS所特有的，还是非空间水逃避DMTS也如此，对75日龄大鼠在空间和亮度DMTS的习得及后续保持方面进行了比较。与接受亮度问题测试的大鼠相比，接受空间问题测试的大鼠中有更大比例能够学会该任务，习得错误更少，并且在1、5、15、30、60和120分钟的延迟间隔测试时表现出更好的保持能力。习得RI对任何一项任务的习得速度均无影响。对持续错误、侵入的发生情况以及位置一致性表现（试验的两次运行中逃生平台在相同物理位置）的检查表明，接受亮度训练的大鼠的选择往往更多地受到空间而非亮度线索的影响，这表明大鼠在水逃避DMTS任务中有一种未经学习的使用空间线索的倾向。
