Fig. 1.

Choreographed “syntactic chain” sequence of grooming actions. A choreographic transcription of a prototypical syntactic grooming chain shows the moment-by-moment trajectories of forelimb strokes over the face and the occurrence of other grooming actions. Drawings (bottom) display the actions that typify each phase of syntactic chains. To read the choreographic transcription, time proceeds from left to right. Thehorizontal axis represents the position of the rat’s nose, and stroke trajectories over the face are depicted relative to the nose. Deviations of the lines above (right paw) and below (left paw) the horizontal axis represent the elevation (level of the eye, the ear, etc.) reached by each forepaw during a stroke. Small rectangles denote paw licks. Large rectangle denotes body licking (adapted from Aldridge et al., 1990).