The effect of the magnitude of the food deprivation motivating operation on free operant preference in mice

•Mice appear to prefer stimuli correlated with food under high deprivation conditions over stimuli correlated with food under low deprivation conditions.•Our findings extend the literature on this phenomenon by including a baseline preference test, employing a free operant test for preference, and testing for preference under extinction conditions.•We provide an analysis of this phenomenon based on the behavior analytic concept of the motivating operation (MO).•We discuss the advantages of the MO approach and suggest a number of avenues for future research.

A number of recent studies have demonstrated that organisms prefer stimuli correlated with food under high deprivation conditions over stimuli correlated with food under low deprivation conditions. The purpose of the present study was to extend the literature on this phenomenon by testing for preference under extinction conditions, testing for preference at baseline, employing a free operant preference test, and using mice as subjects. Our results appear to support the existing literature in that most subjects preferred a stimulus correlated with food under high deprivation conditions in the post-training preference test. We provide an analysis of this phenomenon based on the concept of the motivating operation (MO) and discuss how this analysis suggests a number of avenues for further research on this topic.