Effect of Early Food Deprivation upon Later Consummatory Behavior in Puppies

Abstract

Early food deprivation in rats has been found to increase adult hoarding (Hunt, 1941; Hunt, et al., 1949; Seitz, 1954), rate of food consumption (MCKelvey & Marx, 1951; Mandler, 1958; Marx, 1952) and aggression (Seitz, 1954). However, some of the results are equivocal and one study (McKelvey & Marx, 1951) failed to find an effect of early deprivation on hoarding and rate of eating. The interpretation of these results has been derived from learning theory (Hunt, 1941; Hunt, et al., 1949; Mandler, 1958; Marx, 1952) and/or psychoanalytic theory (Seitz, 1954). For example, Hunt (1941, p. 357) suggested that adult feeding-frustration acted as a conditioned anticipatory hunger approximating in intensity that experienced during the infantile feeding-frustration. Marx (1952) offered the hypothesis that the habit of rapid eating acquired during infantile deprivation persisted to adulthood and thus afforded a fast-eating rat more opportunity to hoard during the test. Mandler (1958) suggested that the entire deprivation history affects the animal's drive directly rather than its habit strength as measured by a bar-pressing response in her experiment. On the other hand, the psychoanalytic approach used by Seitz (1954) suggested that adult hoarding results from a fixation of storing-up food in infancy. The aim of the present experiment was to demonstrate that early food deprivation affects later consummatory behavior in the dog as well as the rat. Based on the results of Hunt ( 1941) and Marx ( 1952), the hypothesis tested was that puppies deprived of food early in life would consume more food at a faster rate, be more motivated toward food, and less easily inhibited to eat than would puppies on an ad libitum diet. W e also predicted that the deprived puppies would be more reinforced by the human feeder and consequently show more attraction to and less avoidance of a human examiner than nondeprived puppies.