Social Rodent Lab, Institute of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany
Jochen Hoog
Social Rodent Lab, Institute of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany; Comparative Psychology, Institute of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany
Tobias Kalenscher
Comparative Psychology, Institute of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany
Social Rodent Lab, Institute of Experimental Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-University, Düsseldorf, Germany; Department of Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence, Tilburg School of Humanities and Digital Sciences, Tilburg University, Tilburg, Netherlands
Many species, including rats, are sensitive to social signals and their valuation is important in social learning. Here we introduce a task that investigates if mutual reward delivery in male rats can drive associative learning. We found that when actor rats have fully learned a stimulus-self-reward association, adding a cue that predicted additional reward to a partner unblocked associative learning about this cue. By contrast, additional cues that did not predict partner reward remained blocked from acquiring positive associative value. Importantly, this social unblocking effect was still present when controlling for secondary reinforcement but absent when social information exchange was impeded, when mutual reward outcomes were disadvantageously unequal to the actor or when the added cue predicted reward delivery to an empty chamber. Taken together, these results suggest that mutual rewards can drive associative learning in rats and is dependent on vicariously experienced social and food-related cues.
