can rats learn to associate a flavour with the delayed delivery of food associations between a specific flavour and access to food were studied using a discrimination procedure devised by holman 1975 this involved giving rats one flavour eg cinnamon of saccharin solution on some days and following this by delivery of food and a second flavour eg wintergreen on other days which was never followed by food experiment 1 used glucose delivered after a 30min delay and a slight increase in preference for the paired flavour was detected using a 20min delay experiment 2 varied the kind of food used some evidence for discrimination learning was again found in the glucose group but there was no evidence that rats could associate a flavour with starch solution or solid chow over this delay to check that the general procedure was a sensitive one in experiment 3 one flavour was added to glucose ie without delay and this produced large shifts in a subsequent preference test overall the results threw doubt on claims that rats as readily form flavourcalorie associations over delays as they do flavourtoxicosis associations