Retention of Ordinal Position Information with Limited and Extended Serial Training

Abstract

To examine the possibility that position cues are temporal and therefore ineffective early in serial runway training, rats were runway trained on a three-trial series of different rewards. The series was SNP', where Sand P' refer to series trials that concluded with four sucrose or eight plain Noyes pellets, respectively. The middle trial was never rewarded (N) . Early in training, a significant pattern of running slowly on the middle trial and rapidly on the initial and terminal trials had emerged. Transfer tests to series of trials (NNN) never rewarded after this limited training (on Day 19) and later after extended training (Day 39) , each gave evidence that the rats relied upon position cues in the tests. The three-trial patterns established before the tests were retained on the three trials of the NNN series. The results suggest the prevalence of position learning, but they work against the idea that position cues are temporal and effective only with extended training.