Conditioned place preference in 12-day-old Japanese quail.

Abstract

Four experiments assessed the ability of 12-day-old Japanese quail to learn a conditioned place preference (CPP). In Experiment 1, immature quail learned to prefer a place paired with normal food over a place paired with tainted food. Experiment 2 indicated that this kind of learning can be achieved with as few as 2 days of training. It was discovered in Experiment 3 that place preferences can be established with exposure to only one hedonic event. Quail learned to prefer a chamber paired with either normal food or tainted food over a chamber that did not contain a hedonic stimulus. Experiment 4 successfully replicated the 2-day normal-food-induced place preference in the previous experiment, while also showing that mere context exposure is not sufficient to produce CPP.