THE EFFECTS OF MAZE-ARM LENGTH ON PERFORMANCE IN THE RADIAL-ARM MAZE

Rats trained in a 16-arm radial maze with arms half the standard length demonstrated extremely low, but above chance, choice accuracy (Experiment 1). Rats trained in a 12-arm maze with short arms demonstrated a substantially higher degree of adjacent-arm responding than did rats trained in the same maze with long maze arms and, when response stereotypy was disrupted by a forced-choice procedure, the short-arm group chose less accurately than the long-arm group (Experiment 2). In a 16-arm maze with 8 short arms and 8 long arms, there was a strong preference for short arms and no evidence for a difference in the ability to discriminate previously visited arms from unvisited arms as a function of arm length, as measured by a two-alternative forced-choice procedure (Experiment 3). These results are interpreted as indicating that arm length affects a choice criterion, with a relatively lax criterion being applied to shorter arms. © 1990 Psychonomic Society, Inc.