FIGURE 3.

Approach-preferring rats showed reduced social exploration. (A) The three subgroups showed no differences in the % of time exploring the center of the open field, a measure of innate fear. (B) Experimental setup for the exploration task in which rats could explore the outside of a novel cage that was first empty and later contained a demonstrator rat. (C) Placing the empty cage in the center of the open field increased the time spent exploring near the cage in all three subgroups. Adding a demonstrator rat to the empty cage further increased the time spent exploring for Avoid-pref. and Timer subgroups, but not in the Approach-pref. subgroup. Avoid-pref., n = 23; Timers, n = 24; Approach-pref., n = 10 (Student’s t-tests *p < 0.05, Bonferroni corrected).