The Signalled Licking/Avoidance of Punishment (SLAP) Paradigm in Rats: Capacity for Insight Between Goal Conditioning and Signalling Contingencies

Abstract

In developmental-age kids with specific-learning-disabilities (SLD), functional illiteracy entails poor logical reasoning; in those with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), a deficit in prospective memory results in difficulty executing previously planned actions. We model this SLD and/or ADHD construct in the rat via the signalled-licking/avoidance-of-punishment protocol (SLAP): We aim to study to assess rats' ability to merge two independently learned notions (one Pavlovian and one instrumental) and their deliberate exploitation. Rats were tested in Skinner boxes with a water-dispenser and lickometer. The ‘Flash’ paradigm consists of 30-min daily sessions, in which 5-min safe phases (i.e., sound and light off, signalled free-drinking) are intertwined by 1-min unsafe phases (i.e., sound and light on). If subjects drink during unsafe phases, a mild footshock is released: Rats learn to withhold drinking. The ‘Allow’ paradigm starts and stays in the unsafe phase. Rats can shift to a 2-min safe phase through a single nose poke in the active-hole. The possibility to exert control over the environment, via seeking dark-and-silence (the predictive contingencies) as deliberate goal, is an unexplored construct in rats. In data from the ‘Flash’ paradigm, a greater number of licks/h during safe phases is confirming that rats easily understand classical passive-avoidance contingencies. Findings from the ‘Allow’ paradigm indicate increased inefficacious nose pokes/h during safe phases, compared to unsafe ones. This is clearly suggesting that rats associate the change of phase with an outcome of their own input into the active nose-poking device. However, rats do not understand the ‘potential’ for instrumental exploitation of their nose pokes. As such, no significant inferences were drawn across the two independent associative notions. Neurobiology of this putative ‘insight’ capability may rely on limbic-striatal-cortical networks. Impairments in the latter may be involved in deficits of prospective memory (in ADHD), and/or impairments in logic skills (in SLD). The SLAP protocol may offer insights on basic neurobiology as well as modulatory effects thereon of pharmacological molecules.