Punishment-specific effects of pentobarbital: dependency on the type of punisher.
Pentobarbital reverses shock punishment but leaves timeout punishment untouched.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Scientists gave monkeys a bar to press for food.
Pressing also brought punishment—either a quick shock or a brief timeout.
After each monkey stabilized, they injected pentobarbital and watched what changed.
What they found
The drug brought bar pressing back when shock was the punisher.
The same drug did nothing when timeout was the punisher.
Pentobarbital only undoes shock-based suppression.
How this fits with other research
McKearney (1976) saw the same drug boost shock-punished responding a year earlier.
Fantino (1967) showed shock and timeout cut behavior equally well without drugs.
Together the three papers say: the punishers look equal until you add a drug.
Burgess et al. (1986) later proved another drug, morphine, also needs the right history to work.
The line of studies keeps one theme: punished behavior is not one thing—details matter.
Why it matters
If you ever consult on cases using medication plus punishment, remember this: a drug might relax shock effects yet leave timeout effects untouched.
Check which punisher is in play before you expect any chemical help.
Your behavior plan, not the pill, may still be the main driver.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pigeons were trained to peck a key under a multiple random-interval 1-minute, random-interval 6-minute schedule of food presentation. Subsequently, over three phases, additions were made during the random-interval 1-minute component as follows: pecks during the component occasionally were punished by timeout presentation (Phase 1), timeouts were presented independently of responding during the component (Phase 2), pecks during the component occasionally were punished by electric-shock presentation (Phase 3). In Phases 1 and 3, response-dependent timeout and shock suppressed responding and established equivalent rates in both components of the multiple schedule. Intermediate doses of pentobarbital increased responding suppressed by electric-shock punishment but had little or no effect on responding suppressed by timeout punishment. Response-independent presentation of timeouts did not result in suppression of responding (thus showing that response-dependent timeout acted as a punisher), and pentobarbital did not reliably increase unpunished responding. Pentobarbital's selective "punishment-attenuating" properties depend on the nature of the punisher.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1977 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1977.28-285