Effect of Antenatal Nutrition Condition on the Relation Between Amount of Effort and Extinction

The present study is to test a hypothesis that effort may be under the effect of body weight gain conditions, by utilizing the method of prenatal dietary restriction and bar press in a Skinner box. 40 albino rats 20 of which were from dietary restricted (half of usual diet from the day of gestation) mothers and the other 20 of which were from normally fed mothers were trained to press a bar in the Skinner box. The bar weight for a half of each rat group was 50 gm and for the other half was 10 gm. Then they were run extinction trials with the weight shifted har (50 gm shifted to 10 gm and 10 gm to 50 gm in extinction trials). The experimental result, by the total number of bar press responses in three extinction series on three consecutive days, did not support the hypothesis. Only the weight of the press-bar in extinction could have effect on the rate of extinction.