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Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats

Operant Procedures for Assessing Behavioral Flexibility in Rats

Published on: February 15, 2015

Testing brown lemurs (Eulemur fulvus) on the reverse-reward contingency task without a modified procedure.

Emilie Genty¹, Paul Chu Sin Chung, Jean-Jacques Roeder

¹Centre de Primatologie, UDS, Chemin du Fort Foch, 67207 Niederhausbergen, France. gentyemilie@yahoo.fr

Behavioural Processes

|November 4, 2010

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Lemurs, like other primates, struggle with inhibitory control tasks. However, extensive trials allowed one lemur to master the reverse-reward task and generalize its learning.

Area of Science:

Cognitive neuroscience
Primate behavior
Animal learning

Background:

The reverse-reward contingency task assesses inhibitory control, where animals choose smaller rewards to gain larger ones.
Most animals require modified procedures to overcome impulsive biases towards larger immediate rewards.
Previous research shows rhesus macaques and mangabeys can master this task with extensive trials.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate if lemurs can master the reverse-reward task without modified procedures by increasing trial numbers.
To determine if lemurs exhibit similar learning capabilities to other primates in inhibitory control tasks.

Main Methods:

Lemurs were presented with a reverse-reward contingency task involving choices between different food quantities.

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A large number of trials were administered to assess learning and adaptation.

Performance was evaluated based on the consistent selection of smaller quantities to obtain larger rewards.

Generalization of learned behavior to novel food arrays was tested.

Main Results:

Initially, lemurs displayed an impulsive bias towards larger food quantities.
One out of five lemurs successfully mastered the reverse-reward task after a significant number of trials.
This subject also demonstrated the ability to generalize its learned behavior to new food choices.

Conclusions:

Lemurs possess the capacity to learn and master the reverse-reward task through extended exposure, similar to other primates.
Inhibitory control in lemurs can be developed without procedural modifications, given sufficient training.
This finding contributes to understanding cognitive flexibility and learning in non-human primates.