Effects of the number of competitors on different consumption measurements with rats.

Abstract

In the present study was assessed the effect of ¨social¨ facilitation and ¨social¨ interference in a situation of food intake in groups of rats of 2 to 8 members. The analyzed measurements were the differential weight, time of intake and rate of intake. There was fitted to a power function and to a linear function to the data of each measurement. The best fit to the data was determined with the explained variance level (R2). It was observed that the power function had a greater explained variance for the differential weight and time of intake. Nevertheless, in the intake rate, the function that best described the trend of the data was linear one. Additionally, when the trend of this last measurement was analyzed, the magnitudes of the effects of facilitation and interference were determined, complementing the information obtained from other measurements. Lastly, the results obtained had coincidence with the reports of Castro & Brewer (1992) in a study of feeding with humans. The paper emphasizes that in situations of collective feeding, the type of analyzed measurements may give rise to different trend of data but its interpretation has to be reviewed based on its particular characteristics.