Long-term retention of avoidance learning by immature and adult rats as a function of environmental enrichment.

Abstract

In Experiment 1 23-day-old rats learned active or passive avoidance. Control animals received equivalent handling and shock in a different apparatus. Both groups were then exposed to an enriched or standard laboratory environment for 60 days prior to a retention test. Environmental enrichment resulted in greater forgetting of active avoidance. The lack of initial latency differences between control groups together with other indices of activity suggested that the differential forgetting was due to memorial effects rather than environmentally induced activity differences. Experiment 2 indicated that environmental enrichment resulted in greater forgetting for both weanlings and adults, implicating extraexperimental interference as a general source of incomplete retention by the rat.

Ontogenetic changes in the modulation of taste aversion learning by home environmental cues in rats.

“…It is still possible, however, that the housing environment during the 6-day interval between the conditioning episode and testing might have affected retention test performance; for instance, nonspecific retroactive interference attributable to the retention-interval environment has been reported by Parsons and Spear (1972). Perhaps in Experiments 1, 3, and 4, the taste-illness memory of the infants, all of which spent the interval between conditioning and testing within their home, is immune to such interference for those animals that drank the poisoned solution in an unfamiliar environment.…”

Presurgical dietary history and the behavior of control and septal lesioned rats

“…However, EC rats received the full 10 sec of shock without escaping more frequently than the other groups (D x L: H = 6.88, df = 1, p < .05). Interestingly, Parsons and Spear (1972) found that environmental enrichment following the acquisition of an active avoidance task interferes with relearning of the task at a later date.…”

Enriched Environments: Facts, Factors, and Fantasies

“…Further evidence of learning in the EC situation comes from a recent study by Parsons and Spear (1972). In three experiments, two with weanlings and one with adult rats, the animals first learned in an active avoidance situation.…”