Effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine on responding suppressed by conditioned punishment.
Anti-anxiety drugs can free punished behavior, while stimulants further suppress it—check meds before you blame your plan.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists gave pigeons a two-key peck task.
Pecks on one key paid food.
Pecks on the other key flashed a red light and cut pay for both keys.
After the birds learned to avoid the punished key, the team gave shots of chlordiazepoxide or d-amphetamine and counted pecks again.
What they found
Chlordiazepoxide made the birds peck the punished key more.
Higher doses meant more pecks.
D-amphetamine did the opposite: it cut punished pecks even further.
The same split showed when the red light came on by itself.
How this fits with other research
COLWINOGRAD (1965) saw that chlorpromazine also restored pigeon pecks that d-amphetamine had shut down.
The pattern is steady: amphetamine tightens punishment, anti-anxiety or anti-psychotic drugs loosen it.
Willner (2015) looked at people with ID and found most drugs do not cut aggression, yet the pigeon data say drug class matters.
The lab line across 50 years warns us: sedation is not the same as true behavior change.
Why it matters
If a client on stimulants suddenly avoids tasks you punish, the drug may be boosting that avoidance.
Before you thicken the punishment plan, ask the doctor if a switch or dose change is possible.
Track response side-by-side with med times; you may see the real suppressor is pharmacological, not your procedure.
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Join Free →Graph each punished response against the hour the client took their stimulant or anxiety med—look for a dose-linked dip or spike.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
Key pecking by two pigeons, maintained under a variable-interval two-minute schedule of food presentation, was suppressed when each response produced a five-second visual stimulus that was occasionally paired with shock. Stimulus-shock pairings occurred independently of responding according to a variable-time six-minute schedule for one bird or once per session for the other bird. The effects of chlordiazepoxide and d-amphetamine were assessed on this baseline of behavior suppressed by conditioned punishment. Chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in the rate of punished responding, whereas d-amphetamine produced only decreases. In addition, chlordiazepoxide produced dose-related increases in response rate during the response-produced and response-independent stimulus presentations; d-amphetamine, however, only decreased responding during stimulus presentations.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1981 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1981.35-209