Odor trail and spontaneous alternation

Maze orientation, visual and vestibular cues in two-maze spontaneous alternation of rats

“…We also found significant SA in the perpendicular condition, although Douglas (1966a), Lester (1968), and Still and MacMillan (1969) did not. Lester's experiment involved: (1) food deprived rats which had had (2) prior alternation experience and which (3) were rewarded with food in the arms.…”

“…In our study, the variance of the scores and the tendency of rats to balk was somewhat greater in the perpendicular than in the parallel condition; perhaps these effects reflect the operation of facto rs which produced nonalternation in the perpendicular condition of other studies. At the current time, we can only conclude that all the factors determining the rates of SA have yet to be identified, In terms of Douglas' scheme of ve stibular guidance of SA, our results bear either of two interpretations: (1) Kinesthetic (body turn) cues are sufficient to maintain SA in the absence of intramaze cues, or (2) vestibular information may be used only to record a particular turn and other mechanisms are used by the rat to determine maze orientation (Still & MacMillan, 1969). Since subjects could see while being carried between mazes , it was necessary to rule out any visual contribution to SA in this situation before going on to study these possibilities.…”

“…Thus, Lester's replication of Douglas' work would have been methodologically valid only if he also had demonstrated that similarly treated rats would still alternate in the twomaze parallel situation. Still and MacMillan's (1969) replication was less ambiguous, but, as these authors themselves noted, while SA rates in their perpendicular condition were not different from chance, they also were not different from significant abovechance rates in the other conditions of their experiment. In our study, the variance of the scores and the tendency of rats to balk was somewhat greater in the perpendicular than in the parallel condition; perhaps these effects reflect the operation of facto rs which produced nonalternation in the perpendicular condition of other studies.…”

“…Bronstein, Dworken, Bilder, and Wolkoff (1974) and Sherrick and Dember (1966) failed to obtain significant rates of SA in a two-maze parallel situation. Lester (1968) and Still and MacMillan (1969) replicated the nonoccurrence of SA in the two-maze perpendicular condition; the latter authors (1969,1975) reported significant SA in this situatio n if olfactory cues other than odor trails were present. In view of the potential methodological advantages of the two-maze procedure, as well as the theoretical questions concerning the cues involved in spatial orientation of SA, we thought it worthwhile to reexamine the characteristics of two-maze SA.…”

“…It is possible that the reduction of SA in all of the testing conditions of Experiment 3 reflects a pervasive contribution of vestibular information to the spatial guidance of SA. However, Still and MacMillan (1969) suggested that vestibular input may be only one component in a complex system for the sensory guidance of SA. Perhaps, when no other cues are available, as in our parallel TWO-MAZE ALTERNATION 419 condition, the contribution of the vestibular system becomes particularly important for SA.…”