A total of one hundred and ninety-one Sprague-Dawley rats were employed. Seventy-four adolescent and 61 adult rats, representative of 31 litters, were used during second-order conditioning procedures. Blood and brain ethanol measurements employed 34 adolescent and 22 adults, derived from 10 litters. Animals were born and reared at the Center for Developmental Psychobiology (Binghamton University, USA). The colony was kept at 22 – 24 °C and a 12-hour light-dark cycle was used, with lights on at 8:00 AM. Births were examined daily and the day of parturition was considered as P0. On P1, litters were culled to 10 animals, 5 males and 5 females, whenever possible. Pups were housed with the dam in standard maternity cages with free access to water and food. Weaning was performed at P21. At that day, 8 animals from each litter (4 males and 4 females) were transferred to clean tubs lined with pine shavings. Any remaining animal in the litters was not used in these experiments. At P28, males and females were transferred, in same-sex groups of 4, to clean tubs. To prevent the
