| Abstract: | ![]()
Open-field behavior was studied as a function of three classes of variables: maternal characteristics, rearing environment, and sexual experience. Mothers of experimental subjects were either handled or nonhandled in infancy. Subjects were born and reared to weaning either in maternit cages or in Hebb-type free environments and were placed after weaning into either a laboratory cage or free enviroment. Sexual experience consisted either of bearing and raising a litter or no sexual experience. The results confirmed previous findings that offspring of mothers handled in infancy arc significantly less active in the open field than the offspring of nonhandled mothers. The maternal handling variable also interacted significantly with breeding experience: for rats which had not been bred, those raised by nonhandled mothers were more active than those raised by handled mothers; for females with breeding experience the reverse was true. Overall, thosc femalcs which had reared a litter were more active and defecated more than their nonbred littermates. |
