Passage of time reduces effects of familiarity on social learning: functional implications

Abstract. Previous experiments have shown that, after a rat Rattus norvegicus has eaten a food for several days, it is resistant to social induction of a preference for that food. The present experiments demonstrate that this inhibiting effect of individual experience of a food on social induction of preference for that food is transitory. Seven days after rats had last eaten a food, they exhibited socially induced preferences for that food as strong as the socially induced preferences exhibited by rats that had never eaten the food. These laboratory results suggest that the combined effects of personal and social exposure to foods should result in free-living rats exhibiting particularly pronounced socially induced preferences both for totally unfamiliar foods conspecifics are eating and for foods others are eating that a focal individual has not eaten recently.