AN AVOIDANCE CONDITIONING WITH SOCIAL CUES AS A CONDITIONED STIMULUS

Abstract

The present study aimed to elucidate a preference of the social cues over the physical stimuli in an avoidance conditioning. Eleven male rats were conditioned to buzzer (Buzzer Group) to avoid the electric shock by perching within 5 sec. of stimulus onset. In the same way, the other eleven animals were conditioned not to buzzer but to social cues (Social Group) that were produced by administrating the shock for the partners who reared in the same cages.
The results obtained were as follows:
1) In acquisition of avoidance responses, the preference of the social cues not significant in accoords to the number of trials having reached the criterion (Fig. 1), but seemed to have the effects in log latencies of avoidance responses (Fig. 3and Table 1).
2) In extinction of avoidance responses, the social group rats presented greater prolongation of extinction than the buzzer ones both in the number of trials having reached the criterion (Fig. 2) and in log 1atencies (Fig. 3 and Table 1).
From these results, it could be concluded that the fear induced by intraspecific communication of affects showed more potent influence than that induced by physical aversive stmulus (ES) perse.