The effects of different types of neonatal feminization and environmental stimulation on changes in sex-associated activity/spatial learning skills.

This research programme commenced in West Africa, where it was found that individuals with kwashiorkor gynaecomastia were feminized. This was also reinforced by the interacting dominant maternal socialization practices (Dawson, 1966). This was confirmed with feminized responses for adult male rats, on the Tolman-Maze (Dawson, 1972), while as well confirmed neonatally, for both feminized male and female rats (Dawson, Cheung and Lau, 1973, 1975). The present experiment tests the interacting effects of various levels of environmental stimulation, high, normal and low (Levitsky and Barnes, 1972), using feminized male rats. Thus castration, oestrogen and castration, and oestrogen feminized males, were contrasted with male and female controls. The results confirmed the physiological growth curves and other anatomical differences. As well, the activity data confirmed the hypothesis, for the combined samples (where high Ns mean more reliability) and also the environmental stimulation (F ratio: d.f. 18 and 57, 11.37, p less than 0.001; low Ns here mean lower reliability). However, for the symmetrical maze, the results for the combined samples, were not as convincing as in Dawson et al. (1973, 1975), although the environmental stimulation produced significant results in many cases, including a significant interaction for the analysis of variance (F ratio: d.f. 18 and 57, 3.12 p less than 0.001).