A Task for Assessing the Impact of a Partner on the Speed and Accuracy of Motor Performance in Rats.

To our knowledge, no study has examined the effect of mere presence on accuracy of performance in animals. Therefore, we developed an experimental task to measure rats' motor performance (speed and accuracy) in a social condition. Rats were trained to run on a runway and pull down a lever at the end of the runway.

Effects of the mere presence of conspecifics on the motor performance of rats: Higher speed and lower accuracy.

Many studies on humans and animals have shown that the mere presence of another individual or individuals accelerates the motor performance speed of the subject individual. However, it has not been well investigated whether the mere presence of another individual affects the accuracy of motor performance in animals. In this study, we developed a novel task (run-and-pull task) to simultaneously investigate both the speed and accuracy of motor performance in rats and examined the effect of the mere presence of another rat on the task performance of the subject rat.