Day 176 MCAT Practice Question

Passage 10

Observational learning, i.e., learning a task by observing the success or failure of

others, has been reported in many species, including rodents. However, previous

work in rats…raises the question of whether rats can learn a spatial task in a purely

observed space from watching a conspecific, and if so, does this somehow stabilize

their hippocampal representation? To address these questions, we designed an

observational spatial task in a two-part environment…in which an observer rat

watches a demonstrator animal to learn the location of a hidden reward.



Forty-four male long-Evans rats were included in the present study (3–7 months old

at the time of testing)....Rats were tested for task success (i.e., number of erroneous

attempts) and time taken to find the reward (i.e., latency) during their first direct

exploration of the outside space…Naive animals were tested for the ability to find the

reward without any observational training. After at least 20 consecutive successful

trials, the naive animals became demonstrator animals…Observer animals were

trained on the location of the reward by the demonstrator animals.



To investigate whether learning the location of a hidden reward is possible through

social observational training, we trained observer rats to find the location of a

hidden reward using demonstrator animals (five trials daily for five consecutive

days). We then had the observer animals go out to explore the observed space and

find the reward.



The observer group successfully found the reward in 100% of the animals without

error during their very first direct exploration of the outside space…All subsequent

direct explorations were also 100% successful (n = 15 trials, five animals).

Performance on the first direct exploration was statistically different from that of

the naive animals (Pearson chi-square = 14.44,99.9% confidence, nn = 16 and no = 6).

The success rate across trials did not differ significantly between observer animals,

as they all made no errors. While latency towards reward is a common measure

of spatial performance, it is not particularly informative in this case because the

animals invariably first explore the novel space prior to engaging with the spatial

task. Still, there was an appreciable difference between trained and untrained

animals. The animals in the observer group required much less time to find the

first rewards…It was around half the time it took for naïve animals…Thus, the time to

reward was significantly different between the naive and observer groups for the

first two rewards.”



“The time it took the observer animals to successfully complete the task was

comparable to that of the demonstrators…Observer animals tend to explore the

maze once or twice before engaging in the task. The time required to learn and

successfully complete the task is coherent with the literature for such a naturalistic

social learning task (no food deprivation, no time limit). This task is very timeconsuming, and the latency required for the animals to find the reward makes time

less meaningful than success or failure in the task.



“Our results demonstrate that rats do not need to physically explore an environment

to learn a reward location, provided a conspecific demonstrates where it is.”



Social Learning of a Spatial Task by Observation Alone. Adapted from Doublet. (2022).

Mirror neurons are the neurons that allow an organism to:

A) Participate in classical conditioning experiments

B) Associate an unconditioned stimulus to a conditioned response

C) React similarly to emotional situations another organism is experiencing

D) Understand the boundaries between self- and non-self