Resulting from this process, students draw up a check-list of behaviours that aid the giving and receiving of feedback.
The cognitive basis of components of checking behaviour can be addressed in rats using the observing response task.
Omission of an expected reward increased both functional and non-functional observing responses in all rats, showing that reward omission has the potential to induce high levels of checking behaviour, independent of quinpirole treatment.
Nevertheless, an interesting concept for further study is that excessive checking may be triggered from a once-appropriate high level of checking behaviour that does not subside once the need for high-level checking diminishes.
Compulsive checking may arise in response to obsessions that focus on threat and danger, although, recently, the opposite has been proposed – that over-expression of checking behaviour might drive the development of obsession, perhaps to rationalise or justify excessive, compulsive action [4].
A well-established rodent model of checking behaviour showed that striatal dopamine function is important for the control of checking: following chronic treatment with dopamine D2/3-receptor agonist quinpirole, rats increased open-field locomotor behaviour in a manner that displayed many features of human compulsive checking [16,17].
The main objective of this research is the generation of test scenarios to check the behaviour of an on-board ERTMS component (EVC: European Vital Computer) compared to specifications.
Using the open-field checking model alone, it is not straightforward to examine the cognitive processes that define the development and escalation of checking behaviour.
We validated and evaluated the novel observing response task as a potential model of checking behaviour, by testing the hypothesis that chronic quinpirole treatment would selectively increase observing/checking behaviour, as it does in the open-field checking model.
This task has the future potential for direct translation to human study, thus enabling cognitive features of checking behaviour to be studied in both patient and rodent populations.
