Aversions to alcohol's orosensory cues in infant rats: generalization to compounds of alcohol with sucrose or sodium chloride.

Prior research has demonstrated that rat pups perceive alcohol's orosensory consequences during an acute state of intoxication with the drug and are able to associate these orosensory stimuli with aversive reinforcement. The present two experiments tested whether the resulting conditioned aversion to ethanol orosensory consequences generalized to two basic tastants (sucrose or sodium chloride) and if ethanol's orosensory consequences were detected when this agent was configured with these tastants. Conditioned aversions to alcohol were expressed only in rejection of an intraoral infusion of an ethanol solution alone or ethanol in compound with sucrose (experiment 1). A sucrose aversion was recorded in pups that had been subjected to infusions of a sucrose-ethanol compound paired with aversive reinforcement. An aversion to sodium chloride was not induced, however, by analogous procedures (experiment 2). The results indicate that, as in adults, ethanol aversions do not generalize directly to sucrose alone or sodium chloride alone. The infant is, however, capable of detecting the drug in compound with sucrose, and an acquired aversion to ethanol can be transferred to sucrose through ingestion of a sucrose-alcohol compound.