Do passive-avoidance tasks permit assessment of retrograde amnesia in rats?

In Exp. I, 126 male hooded Long-Evans rats were trained in a modified step-down apparatus which permitted the usual measurement of retrograde amnesia (RA) in terms of latencies but which also permitted the independent assessment of RA in terms of an active-avoidance measure. This was accomplished by providing cues for Ss to discriminate the place where footshock was received. In Exp. II, 87 Ss were trained in a similarly modified step-through task. In both tasks, most of the same Ss which gave evidence of RA as assessed by a passive-avoidance measure showed no memory deficit when an active-avoidance criterion was used. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).