Food‐deprivation Effects on Punished Schedule‐induced Drinking in Rats

Abstract

Food-deprived rats (at 80% of their free-feeding weights) were exposed to a fixed-time 60-s schedule of food-pellet presentation and developed schedule-induced drinking. Lick-dependent signaled delays (10 s) to food presentation led to decreased drinking, which recovered when the signaled delays were discontinued. A major effect of this punishment contingency was to increase the proportion of interpellet intervals without any licks. The drinking of yoked control rats, which received food at the same times as those exposed to the signaled delay contingency (masters), was not consistently reduced. When food-deprivation level was changed to 90%, all master and yoked control rats showed decreases in punished or unpunished schedule-induced drinking. When the body weights were reduced to 70%, most master rats increased punished behavior to levels similar to those of unpunished drinking. This effect was not observed for yoked controls. Therefore, body-weight loss increased the resistance of schedule-induced drinking to reductions by punishment. Food-deprivation effects on punished schedule-induced drinking are similar to their effects on food-maintained lever pressing. This dependency of punishment on food-deprivation level supports the view that schedule-induced drinking can be modified by the same variables that affect operant behavior in general.

Reinforcement of schedule-induced drinking in rats by lick-contingent shortening of food delivery

“…Even though the behavior of drinking was not completely suppressed, the establishment of this contingency led to lower rates of drinking regardless of whether or not the delays were signaled. These results were later replicated (Lamas & Pellón, 1995;Pellón & Castilla, 2000) and have been shown to be very similar to the results normally found when a well-established operant behavior is punished. It has also been seen that resistance to punishment is related to the deprivation levels in operant behavior, just as it is in schedule-induced drinking (Lamas & Pellón, 1995).…”

“…As operants are defined by their consequences, a way to test this hypothesis would be to establish a contingency between the behavior of licking a waterspout and the delivery of food pellets. This contingency has previously been employed in several experiments in which the behavior of drinking was punished by a delay in the delivery of food (Lamas & Pellón, 1995;Pellón & Blackman, 1987;Pellón & Castilla, 2000), thus lengthening the interfood interval. Those studies concluded that adjunctive drinking was subject to punishment but left unanswered the question of whether it was developed by a contingent food schedule (see Patterson & Boakes, 2012).…”

“…As well as operants, (a) schedule-induced drinking covaries with food motivation (i.e., level of food deprivation, quantity and quality of food delivered) and not with water motivation, this having been shown in studies of acquisition (Falk, 1967;Lamas & Pellón, 1997) and punishment of schedule-induced drinking (Lamas & Pellón, 1995), thus setting the ground to the suggestion that adjunctive drinking is reinforced by food but not by water. (b) In terms of acquisition, it has been shown that those behaviors that are subject to reinforcement can be developed as adjuncts, and that if they do not respond to contingent reinforcement, they do not occur as adjuncts.…”

Cognitive impulsivity in animal models: Role of response time and reinforcing rate in delay intolerance with two-choice operant tasks

“…However, food restriction level obviously affects choice in delayed-reinforcement paradigms, with more severe restriction having more marked motivation-enhancing effects (Bradshaw et al, 1983;Ho et al, 1999; see also among others: Leander, 1973;Takahashi and Singer, 1980;Papasava et al, 1986;Lamas and Pellón, 1995;Haberny et al, 2004). Each animal was then placed daily in a computer-controlled operant chamber (Coulbourn Instruments, Allentown, PA, USA), provided with two nose-poking holes, a chamber light, a feeder device, a magazine where pellets (45 mg, BioServ, Frenchtown, NJ, USA) were dropped, and a magazine light.…”

Comportamento adjunto: controvérsias e contribuições teóricas

“…Dentre os estudos com polidipsia, muito tem-se investigado sobre o efeito da manipulação de drogas ou lesões neuroquímicas com vistas a entender o controle central desse comportamento, como por exemplo, os estudos de Bowers, Halberda, Mullen e May (1997); Cirulli, Van Oers, De Kloet e Levine (1994); Didriksen, Olsen, e Christensen (1993); Flores e Pellon (1997); Lu, Tseng, Wan, Yin e Tung (1992); Mittleman, Blaha, e Phillips (1992). Os estudos sem droga manipulam variáveis diversas, porém a mais consistentemente investigada tem sido a conseqüênciação da polidipsia em desenvolvimento ou já instalada (Allan & Matthews, 1992;Lamas & Pellon, 1995a, 1995bLamas & Pelon, 1997). Esses estudos têm mostrado que o comportamento induzido é sensível ao controle operante.…”