Social working memory: Memory for another rat's spatial choices can increase or decrease choice tendencies

Brown, Michael F.; Knight-Green, Mary Beth; Lorek, Edward J.; Packard, Caroline; Shallcross, Wendy L.; Wifall, Timothy; Price, Tom F.; Schumann, E.

doi:10.3758/lb.36.4.327

Cited by 14 publications

(47 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Reports from our laboratory have explained the tendency of a rat to choose maze arms in the radial maze that were visited earlier by a foraging partner in terms of an influence of the foraging partner on choices made by the focal rat (Brown et al, 2007;Brown et al, 2008). However, an alternative possibility is that the tendency to visit the most recent location chosen by the other rat is an artifact of common preferences for particular maze arms.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To the extent that rats prefer locations (maze arms) in the apparatus and those preferences are consistent across rats (or, at least, across cagemates), a tendency to visit maze arms that were visited earlier by the other rat would be expected, even if the rats do not have any influence on each other's choices. Brown et al (2008) examined this possibility by looking for similarities in the orders in which two rats making choices together chose particular maze arms. The results were equivocal.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To this end, naive pairs of rats were tested in the same maze used in the experiments of Brown et al (2008). On half of the trials, they were tested separately, and on the remaining half, they were tested together.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…One rat in each pair was marked on its tail and back to facililocation. Brown et al (2008) suggested that this pattern of results requires interaction between information about the rat's own experiences and information about the behavior (choices) of its foraging partner.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, work in our laboratory has shown that rats foraging together with their cagemate in a radial-arm maze are also affected by the choices of the other rat and that at least some of these effects are produced by memory for the choices made earlier during the trial by the other rat (Brown, Farley, & Lorek, 2007;Brown et al, 2008). The nature of the effect produced by choices of the other rat is sometimes an increase in the tendency to visit the locations chosen by it and sometimes an opposite tendency to avoid visits to those locations.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Social effects on spatial choice in the radial arm maze

Brown

Prince

Doyle

2009

Learning & Behavior

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The existence, characteristics, and behavior of conspecifics are important features of most animals' worlds. Although many animals live in relative isolation, many others interact with members of their own species in critically important ways. Given the importance of social interaction, one would expect that the behavior of others serves as the content of many memories and that such social memories would be an important part of our investigations of animal memory. Although there is increasing evidence that learning from other individuals is important for many animals (e.g., Galef & Laland, 2005;Zentall & Galef, 1988), very little is known about the existence, p properties, or mechanisms of memory for the behavior of other animals.It is well known that the efficiency of choices made by rats in the radial-arm maze task is increased by memories of the spatial locations that they have already chosen and depleted of food (e.g., Olton, 1978;Olton & Samuelson, 1976). Recently, work in our laboratory has shown that rats foraging together with their cagemate in a radial-arm maze are also affected by the choices of the other rat and that at least some of these effects are produced by memory for the choices made earlier during the trial by the other rat (Brown, Farley, & Lorek, 2007;Brown et al., 2008). The nature of the effect produced by choices of the other rat is sometimes an increase in the tendency to visit the locations chosen by it and sometimes an opposite tendency to avoid visits to those locations.Brown et al. (2007) used a free-choice procedure in which two rats chose simultaneously from the eight locations in the maze, as well as an observer/model procedure in which a subject rat observed a model rat make choices in the maze and later made choices itself. In the latter procedure, the subject rat avoided locations that had been chosen by the model rat. In the free-choice procedure, the results were more complicated. There was a tendency to selectively choose the location that had been most recently d visited by the other rat but an opposite tendency to avoid locations visited earlier during the trial by the other rat. Brown et al. (2007) suggested that the physical presence d of the other rat on or near the maze location that it had most recently visited functioned as an attractant stimulus. However, rats avoided locations that they remembered to have been visited earlier during the trial by the other rat.More recently, Brown et f al. (2008) reported a series of experiments using the same free-choice procedure used in some of the experiments reported by Brown et al. (2007). Rather than the usual technique of baiting each maze arm with a small amount of food that is depleted when a rat visits the arm, each maze arm was baited with a large number of pellets, so that food remained throughout each trial. Furthermore, the hedonic value of the food was mad nipulated by baiting some locations with less-preferred grain pellets and other locations with more-preferred sucrose pellets. With one important exception, there ...

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social effects on spatial choice in the radial arm maze

Brown

Prince

Doyle

2009

Learning & Behavior

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“Shall two walk together except they be agreed?” Spatial behavior in rat dyads

2014

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When animals explore an unfamiliar environment, they gather information that enables them to form a cognitive representation of that environment and to use it subsequently in traveling there. In the present study, rats were tested in a large arena as singles, then in dyads, and finally, again as singles, in order to examine the effect of the social environment on exploration. Traveling in dyads facilitated exploration compared to the behavior of the same rats when they explored alone. Specifically, each rat in a dyad traveled a greater distance with higher velocity and took wider turns compared to its lone traveling. Moreover, rats in dyads spent a long time together, shared a home base, and when traveling in the same direction, one rat was leading the other. In addition to exploring the same locations, leaders explored more "private" locations, not visited by the other rat. Features of the dyad behavior were carried over to the behavior of the same rats when tested as individuals, after the dyad trial. Compared to singles, dyads represent the first step toward grouping, and it is suggested that the conspicuous change between the behavior of a rat as single compared to its behavior when in a dyad should be greater than any further changes that may occur in spatial cognitive behavior of triads, quartets, or larger groups. In other words, while the present changes in spatial cognition observed in dyads represent a small step toward grouping, they are a giant leap for the individual.

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