INTERACTION OF AGE AND SHOCK INTENSITY ON ACQUISITION OF A DISCRIMINATED CONDITIONED EMOTIONAL RESPONSE

48 male Sprague-Dawley rats (40, 90, and 354 days old) were trained to learn a discriminative conditioned emotional response using UCS shock of .5 and 1 ma. In the 2nd study the difficulty of the discrimination was reduced by changing the characteristics of the CS+ and CS- and setting UCS shock at .6 ma. Deprivation schedules were adjusted daily to the Ss' growth rates. Rate of acquisition was a function of shock intensity and inversely related to problem difficulty and age. Differences between this and other studies are attributed partly to the procedure of age-corrected body weight used in this study. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved). © 1969 American Psychological Association.