Taste aversion learning in young and adult rats.

Abstract

Rat pups and adults were compared on their ability to learn taste aversions with 1 and 2-bottle tests, 2 different illness-inducing agents and flavors and varying taste-illness delays. Rat pups learned taste aversions with 1- or 2-bottle tests, but only with short taste-illness delays. Delays of 60 min were sufficient to block taste aversion learning in pups. Pups failed to demonstrate neophobia to a novel taste. Pups probably forget taste information more rapidly than adults, perhaps because taste information is not so salient for pups as for adults.