Abstract
Individual differences in behaviors are seen across many species, and investigations have focused on traits linked to aggression, risk taking, emotionality, coping styles, and differences in cognitive systems. The current study investigated whether there were individual differences in proactive interference tasks in rats (Rattus Norvegicus), and tested hypotheses suggesting that these tasks should load onto a single factor and there should be clusters of rats who perform well or poorly on these tasks. The performance of 39 rats was tested across three learning tasks that all involved disengagement from an irrelevant previously learned stimulus to a relevant stimulus: latent inhibition (LI), partial reinforcement extinction effect (PREE), and reversal learning (RL). An exploratory factor analysis revealed the existence of one factor underlying performance. A cluster analysis revealed the existence of sets of rats displaying either weak LI and strong PREE and RL effects, or vice versa. These findings suggest that proactive interference may be based on a single underlying psychological system in rats.
Highlights
Individual differences in behaviors are seen across many species, and investigations have focused on traits linked to aggression, risk taking, emotionality, coping styles, and differences in cognitive systems
Other research has focused on differences in cognitive systems that might underlay a range of behaviors (Coppens et al, 2010; Matzel & Sauce, 2017; Rayburn-Reeves et al, 2013; Reed & Pizzimenti, 1995; Sauce et al, 2014)
The current study investigated whether there were any consistent individual differences in rats’ performance across tasks that involve a degree of proactive interference
Summary
Individual differences in behaviors are seen across many species, and investigations have focused on traits linked to aggression, risk taking, emotionality, coping styles, and differences in cognitive systems. A cluster analysis revealed the existence of sets of rats displaying either weak LI and strong PREE and RL effects, or vice versa These findings suggest that proactive interference may be based on a single underlying psychological system in rats. Individuals display different sets of correlated behaviors from one another that tend to co-occur across situations and contexts (Sih et al, 2004), and which may be related to underlying traits (Araya-Ajoy & Dingemanse, 2014; Matzel & Sauce, 2017). In latent inhibition (LI), conditioning to a stimulus is retarded following repeated, nonreinforced presentations—the previously irrelevant stimulus becomes relevant in the conditioning stage
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