Effect of early restriction on later form discrimination in the rat.

Abstract

Light-and dark-reared hooded rats were trained on three discriminations involving differences in orientation of single rectangles. Other Ss were trained on a pattern discrimination. No significant differences were found between visually experienced and inexperienced Ss in the acquisition of any of the orientation problems. A highly sgnificant difference between light-and dark-reared Ss was found for the visual pattern problem. The implications of the results are discussed with regard to the proposition that deficits in performance of visually deprived Ss on pattern discriminations are related to the task difficulty per se.CATS BEARED ENTIRELY in the dark and those receiving one hour of diffuse light experience daily require three times as many trials as normally reared animals to learn an N vs. X discrimination (Riesen, 1965). Retarded performance on a triangle vs. circle discrimination has been obtained for the visually deprived rat (Michels, Bevan, & Strasel, 1958; Woodruff & Slovak, 1965), rhesus monkey (Wilson & Riesen, 1966), and chimpanzee (Riesen, Chow, Semmes, & Nissen, 1951). These results have been used to illustrate the important contribution of experience to the visual ontogeny of form perception in mammals (Hebb, 1949;Riesen, 1961). However, more fundamental information must be obtained concerning the nature of the deficit produced by sensory restriction. One of the criticisms (McCleary, 1960;Melzack, 1962) levelled at the interpretation of this deficit is that it is related to the difficulty of the task itself rather than to any particular kind of discrimination (i.e., form) as Hebb and Riesen proposed. These critics have argued that the dark-reared animal is intellectually and/or emotionally inferior to its light-reared counterpart and the more difficult the discrimination (of whatever kind), the more deleterious the effect of this deprivation on performance. In support of such a suggestion is the fact that visually naive mammals learn to discriminate between vertical and horizontal striations as rapidly as visually experienced animals. This has been demonstrated for the

An examination of the intramodal and intermodal behavioral consequences of long‐term vibrissae removal in rats

“…This finding is consistent with two hypotheses about early experience and perceptual development: 1) decreased competition during development from an early developing system (in this case, the somatosensory system) leads to increased competency in a later emerging system-in this case, vision (Burnstine et al, 1984;Turkewitz and Kenny, 1982); and 2) that behavioral demand is a significant factor in determining the impact of early somatosensory restriction on this competency (Burnstine et al, 1984). Given in part the nature of this visual orientation task and the finding that animals in all conditions habituate to repeated presentations of the visual stimuli, these data best support the contention that the compensation seen here is primarily a shift in attentional rather than processing capabilities (Burnstine et al, 1984;Tees, 1976). …”

“…The general rearing conditions have been described previously (Tees, 1968). The rats were raised in 25 x 47 x 20 cm plastic maternity bins until 21 days of age at which time they were placed in groups of 4-6 in "group" hanging wire mesh cages (66 x 25 x 18 cm).…”

The effect of visual deprivation on pattern recognition in the rat

“…Finally, the normally-reared rat also found the task to be difficult. My rats found the task more difficult than was indicated by the Sutherland and Williams (1 969) report, and more difficult than complex pattern discriminations such as N vs X (e.g., Tees, 1968Tees, , 1976.…”

“…Training and testing took place in a shock-avoidance apparatus with 3 stimulus doors, similar to that described by Tees (1968), as modified by Bruinsma and Tees (in press). It consisted of a start box, a choice chamber, and a goal box.…”

Depth perception after infant and adult visual neocortical lesions in light‐ and dark‐reared rats

“…Reurhg Coriditioris. The rearing conditions for DR and LR 1-ats have been described previously (Tees, 1968). All litters were born i n plastic group cages ( 2 8 x 17.S x 30.3 cin).…”