A Reply to a Comment by Dember
In his recent comment on the results obtained by Levine, Staats, and Frommer ( 3 ), Dember ( 1 ) stated that the reason for the negative results obtained in the experiment under discussion was that the Ss were permitted to explore for 15 min. on the first 'exploratory' trial, and "it is my guess that the use of the long exposure trial in conjunction with a small maze accounts for the failure of Levine, et al. to replicate the earlier results. It has been my observation that the small Y-maze becomes confining to the rat after a few minutes. Additional time in the maze serves mainly to increase the rat's emotionality. The satiation effect is too subtle to withstand such a distraction." In light of Dember's comments a subsequent study was run in our laboratory to determine whether the stimulus satiation effect could be obtained by us using the 3-min. exposure time for the exploratory trial that Dember suggested.