4.3 Article

Discriminative and reinforcing stimulus properties of music for rats

Journal

BEHAVIOURAL PROCESSES
Volume 80, Issue 2, Pages 121-127

Publisher

ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.beproc.2008.10.009

Keywords

Music; Auditory discrimination; Auditory reinforcement; Operant conditioning; Conspecific; Vocalization

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We trained rats to discriminate music by Bach from that by Stravinsky using operant conditioning. The rats successfully learned the discrimination and transferred their discrimination to novel music by the same artists. Then, we trained rats on concurrent-chain schedule in which the terminal links were associated with different music, Bach or Stravinsky. The rats did not show strong preference for either style of music, although one subject showed a preference for Bach and another subject preferred Stravinsky. Finally, we examined the validity of the concurrent-chain procedure as a method of preference measurement with conspecific vocalization evoked by an aversive experience. Most of the rats preferred white noise to the conspecific vocalization. Therefore, music has a discriminative stimulus property but not a clear reinforcing property for rats. (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier B.V.

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