Failure to transfer or train a numerical discrimination using sequential visual stimuli in rats

Abstract

We previously reported that rats were able to discriminate among two, three, and four sequentially presented auditory stimuli (Davis & Albert, 1986). In the present paper, we describe our failure to transfer this numerical discrimination to visual stimuli and to establish the same discrimination using visual stimuli in naive animals. These negative results conflict with sporadic evidence of intermodal (auditory-visual) transfer of numerical discriminations, although all such reports have involved simpler dichotomous (many vs. few) requirements. We believe the relative difficulty of our task may have confined processing to the single salient modality (audition) in which it was taught, and precluded evidence of abstract learning by rendering intermodal transfer unattainable. © 1987, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.