Abstract
In a typical drug discrimination experiment, laboratory animals are trained to discriminate a given drug from saline; training drug and saline injections serve as pharmacological stimuli which signal which of several operant responses will be reinforced. Drugs are thought to be discriminable on the basis of their sensory-perceptual effects, and tests for stimulus generalization determine whether other pharmacological treatments produce discriminative stimulus effects similar to those of the training drug.
The most commonly used of many possible drug discrimination procedures is one in which food deprived rats press one of two levers for food according to a fixed ratio-10 (FR-10) schedule. The principal dependent variable of the drug discrimination experiment serves to measure discrimination and generalization. It is this author’s position, but not the general consensus, that this variable is nominal in nature. The more commonly used dependent variable is quantitative and adheres to Skinnerian tradition in behavioral pharmacology. The two-lever, food-reinforced, FR-10 procedure allows derivation of both these two dependent variables. Both the analysis of drug discrimination and generalization data and the interpretation of these data differ markedly depending on whether the variable being used is nominal or quantitative. The differences in interpretation are particularly apparent with partial generalization and have caused a profound divergence in the pharmacological and molecular interpretations of opiate drug discrimination data (Colpaert, 1984). The phenomenon of partial generalization is very significant (Colpaert & Janssen, 1984), and it is indicated here that its analysis is to be conducted nominally. It is recommended here (i) that the nominal variable be used throughout to measure discrimination and generalization and (ii) that the percentage of responding on the appropriate (in training sessions) or selected lever (in test sessions) be monitored to detect possible drug interferences with the effects of the primary reinforcer.
Finally, it may be pertinent to note that the outcome of generalization tests may vary according to one or several of the independent variables of the experiment. That is, the pharmacological specificity of the paradigm is variable, and the training dose, reinforcement, and discriminandum have been identified (Colpaert, 1982b) as conditions which co-determine the naloxone-reversibility and the patterns of generalization in opiate drug discriminations. These and, perhaps, additional manipulations open wide but largely unexplored possibilities for the detailed analysis of the discriminative effects of drugs.
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Colpaert, F.C. (1987). Drug Discrimination: Methods of Manipulation, Measurement, and Analysis. In: Bozarth, M.A. (eds) Methods of Assessing the Reinforcing Properties of Abused Drugs. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4612-4812-5_17
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