Figure 2.

Individual animal task acquisition through consecutive shaping stages. A, Learning curves for sound localization without distractor. Rat1 and rat2 were trained on pure tones (8 kHz tone sequence; blue marker), whereas rats 9–12 were trained on white noise (same duration and amplitude parameters; black marker) and transitioned to pure tones once stable performance was reached. A cumulative Weibull function, fitted to the mean performance of consecutive behavioral sessions, shows each animal's dynamic learning phase (shaded green). B, Stable localization performance for white noise (wn), 4, 8, and 16 kHz (the pure tones used in the final spectra-spatial discrimination task). Mean performance and 95% binomial CIs are shown. C, Individual performance for rats 9–12 during the transition from the localization paradigm (no distractor) to the final target-distractor discrimination paradigm. Mean session performance is shown for 16 kHz localization without distractor (circles), with distractor at a 10–20 dB lower amplitude (squares), and finally with distractor amplitude-matched to the target (crosses; 60 dB SPL). Performance falls only when the full-volume distractor is introduced and quickly recovers. Behavioral sessions with the 8 kHz target were interspersed in the training (data not shown for clarity). Rat1 and rat2 were transitioned to the discrimination paradigm using a different pure tone frequency (24 kHz), thus data are not shown.