Relative cue properties of novel-tasting substances in avoidance conditioning

Rats injected with lithium chloride on a day when they tasted a novel substance, saccharin, subsequently showed avoidance, or bait shyness. However, magnitude of avoidance depended upon the substances given the rats on the days just before and after injection day. Maximum avoidance was found for rats given a familiar, contrasting substance (water) on the days before and after, whereas minimum avoidance was shown by rats given saccharin on those days (as well as on injection day). Intermediate avoidance was found for rats given water on either the day before or the day after. Results confirm the importance of contrasting taste cues in successive discrimination tasks employed in bait-shyness studies.