| Abstract: | Attempted to condition taste aversions to the objects of 2 mineral-specific hungers in 2 experiments with a total of 116 male Sprague-Dawley rats. Both the innate preference of adrenalectomized Ss for sodium and the learned preference of parathyroidectomized Ss for calcium were studied. None of the sodium-deficient Ss poisoned after drinking NaCl reached a taste-avoidance criterion, even after 9 pairings of salt ingestion with aversive lithium chloride injections. 6 of 11 calcium-deficient Ss did not meet the salt-avoidance criterion after 10 pairings. Nondeficient control Ss learned to avoid these salt solutions completely after an average of only 3 such pairings. Besides unmasking a surprising degree of similarity between the learned and innate specific hungers studied, results clearly demonstrate a powerful influence of physiological need on aversion conditioning. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
