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Communication Dans Un Congrès Année : 2012

Response to all after conditioning to parts of the whole: a case of configural perception in the newborn rabbit

Résumé

Coming from flowers, foods or conspecifics, odours are ubiquitous in our environment. Most of the time, perceived odours are the result of complex relationships between tens or more of odorants with our olfactory system. Two perceptual strategies are potentially engaged to perceive such chemically complex mixtures. The elemental mode allows the perception of each component's quality. Conversely, the configural mode supports the perception of a new odour in addition to, or in place of, the odours of the components (blending effect). In humans, it is usually considered that the prevalence of one mode on the other is due, in part, to mixture complexity. In the rabbit, previous results have shown that newborns perceive in a configural mode a senary mixture, which gives rise to a blending effect in human adults (mixture smelling like red cordial; RC). Indeed, after learning of one component, newborn rabbits do not respond to the RC mixture. In the same time, they perfectly respond to a mixture including the same chemical components but at a different ratio, or to another senary mixture not blending in humans. Here, we tested the hypothesis that learning a sufficient number of components may induce responsiveness to the complex RC mixture initially processed following the configural mode. To that goal, we compared the pups' responsiveness to RC after learning of one, two, three or more of the components with the aim to assess whether the components' perception is not at all possible in RC (robust configuration), or if the generalisation is possible depending on the number of components learned (weak configuration). Results suggest a weak configural perception of RC, and a behavioural responsiveness dependent on the knowledge the newborns have of the components.
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Dates et versions

hal-01122964 , version 1 (04-03-2015)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : hal-01122964 , version 1
  • PRODINRA : 171158

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Sébastien Romagny, Thierry Thomas-Danguin, Gérard Coureaud. Response to all after conditioning to parts of the whole: a case of configural perception in the newborn rabbit. 16. international symposium on Olfaction and taste (ISOT), Jun 2012, Stockholm, France. 1 p. ⟨hal-01122964⟩
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