Is there a relationship between pellet sugar content and schedule-induced polydipsia? A reexamination
Five groups of six food-deprived female albino rats received different formulas of Noyes sugared dry-food pellets under a FT 60-sec food reinforcement schedule. Relative to baseline conditions that preceded and followed the FT schedule, 26 of 30 animals more than doubled their water consumption in the FT food-reinforcement schedule condition. The results of this study confirm previous investigators’ reports of an inverse ordinal relationship between the amount of water consumed and sugar content of the food reinforcer, but this relationship was found to be neither numerically large nor statistically significant. It is concluded that premature theoretical speculation, drawn from numerical relationships that lack statistical significance, may be a very unprofitable technique for identification of underlying causes of schedule-induced polydipsia. © 1978, The Psychonomic Society, Inc.. All rights reserved.