Sixty rat pups, 21 days old, drank 9% sucrose and then received a single injection of distilled water or .3, .6, 1.8, or 3.0 mEq of lithium chloride (LiCI). Testing with a two-bottle choice procedure showed that sucrose taste aversion occurred reliably following injections of 1.8 and 3.0 mEq of LiCI, but not following .3-or .6·mEq injections. In Experiment 2, 80 rat pups, 21 days old, drank 9% sucrose and received an injection of LiCI (3.0 mEq) or distilled water and then were tested for taste aversion 24, 48, 72, or 168 h later. Aversion effects were reliable at each retention interval; the magnitude of aversion was invariant across intervals.Recent studies of taste aversion learning have shown that when the conditions of training and testing are appropriate, young rats 22 to 29 days old learn to inhibit consummatory responding toward a taste stimulus that previously accompanied toxicosis (e.g., Ader & Peck, 1977;Baker, Baker, & Kesner, 1977; Grote & Brown, 1971 b; Klein, Domato, Hallstead, Stephens, & Mikulka, 1975). However, Baker et aL (1977) and Klein et al. (1975) have indicated that although taste aversion effects were demonstrable with young rats, these effects seemed more labile than they appeared to be for older rats, 80 days of age. That is, 'conditions that yielded reliable taste aversion effects in adult rats yielded only marginal effects in younger rats. Unfortunately, the relatively sparse amount of information about the parameters of taste aversion for weanling rats makes it difficult to ascertain the basis for the weanlings' performance in aversion learning. One apparently potent taste aversion variable whose effects have been reported for adult rats (Nachman & Ashe, 1973) but not for weanlings is the intensity (concentra· tion) of the toxicosiS-inducing agent. Nachman and Ashe (1973) showed that for adult rats, 60 days old, taste aversion increased reliably with increasing milleeqUivalents (mEq) of lithium chloride (LiCl) up to 3.0 mEq. Since there are no dose·response data available for infant rats, Experiment 1 investigated the effects of injecting .3-, .6-, 1.8-, or 3.O-mEq liCI on taste aversion in rats, 21 days old at injection. On Days 2, 3, 4, and 5, each pup received l·h daily access to tap water; the wet mash was made progressively drier over days until on Day 5 only dry ground chow served as food. On Day 6 the rat pups, 21 days old, were randomly assigned to injection conditions (n = 12). Each pup received 1-h access to 9% sucrose (weight/volume), and within 15 min after the end of the drinking period, each received an intraperitoneal injection of .3, .6, or 1.8 mEq of .15·molar Lic!, or 3.0 mEq of .30-molar LiCl, or 12 ml/kg of distilled water. Beginning 24 h after injection, each rat was tested for sucrose taste aversion with a two-bottle choice procedure: One bottle contained 9% sucrose, the other, tap water. Each pup received nine 1-h test periods, one period every 24 h. The measure of performance was the amount drunk (in milliliters) from each bottle, as calculated by the diff...
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