Effects of an activity-based anorexia procedure on within-session changes in nose-poke responding

This study tested the effects of an activity-based anorexia (ABA) procedure on within-session changes in responding. In the ABA group (N = 8), rats were given a 60-min feeding session and allowed to run in a running wheel for the remainder of each day. During the daily 60-min feeding session, each nose-poke response was reinforced by a food pellet. In the control group (N = 8), rats experienced the same procedure except that the wheel was locked and thus rats could not run. The experiment lasted for 6 days. Rats in the ABA group consumed less and lost more body weight than those in the control group. Within-session decreases in nose-poke responding were steeper for ABA than control rats. In addition, response rates were well described as linear functions of the cumulative number of reinforcers in both groups (r²s > .96). The regression lines for the ABA group had steeper slopes and smaller x-axis intercepts than those for the control group. However, the y-axis intercepts of the regression lines were similar for the two groups. These effects were different from the effects of taste-aversion learning induced by post-session wheel running (Aoyama, 2007), suggesting a different mechanism in each preparation.