Response Alternation: An afterthought

Abstract

Recently, I reviewed work on response alternation in animals (3). The most common situation for examining response alternation is to give an animal one trial in a T-maze with a forced turn in the stem. Dingle, using boxelder bugs and meal worms (I), has found that increasing the distance between the start of the maze and the forced turn increases the amount of response alternation. This effect is not predictable from the nvo major explanations of response alternation (reactive inhibition and centrifugal swing plus thigmotaxis) . One explanation that was advanced many years ago for response alternation in this situation was in terms of a forward-going tendency (FGT) of animals (4). The start to the forced-turn section of the runway sets up an FGT which is resumed at the subsequent choice point, leading to apparent response alternation. This explanation was omitted from my review because I though it trivial. Subsequently, it occurred to me that the FGT coulcl explain the effect of start to forced-turn distance on response alternation. The longer the distance the more likely (or the more strongly) an FGT will be aroused and so the more likely that apparent response alternation will occur. There are, of course, dangers in crossing species boundaries. Rats have not demonstrated response alternation unequivocally (3) and the FGT may not exist in bugs. However, if we assume that response alternation could be shown in rats in a T-maze with a forced turn in the stem and that star; to forced-turn distance did affect the amount of response alternation, then an experiment can be suggested that moves toward a specification of how the FGT operates. By analogy with Douglas's work on spontaneous alternation in rats (2), it may be that rats with middle-ear disease would not show an effect from start to forced-turn distance whereas rats without the disease would show an effect.