Avoidance tasks, animal studies

Winneke et al (1982b) carried out an interesting study which demonstrates how relevant the nature of the learning task is. In their study rats were dosed pre- and post-natally with lead. Animals were tested on a two-way active avoidance task, and later on a visual discrimination task. In the discrimination task the performance of lead-dosed animals was inferior to the controls. In the avoidance task the performance of animals improved significantly in a dose-related fashion, with increasing lead level. 

Another study has also reported an improvement in two-way active avoidance tasks in lead-dosed animals, but this must be balanced against two studies where the performance of lead-dosed animals was worse, and another three studies reviewed by Cavanagh et al (1984) found no differences at all. 

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