Repeated acquisition of response sequences: stimulus control and drugs.
Calming drugs can quietly wreck new skill learning, so guard your teaching trials.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team taught animals new button sequences every session.
They gave two calming drugs: phenobarbital and chlordiazepoxide.
Then they watched how well the animals learned the new chain.
What they found
Both drugs made more errors and slowed learning.
Higher doses hurt accuracy the most.
Chain learning was the easiest part to damage.
How this fits with other research
Goldman et al. (1979) swapped the drugs. They used speed-like drugs instead of calmers. The same pattern showed: learning suffered more than old, steady work.
Martens et al. (1989) tried the task with people and diazepam. Again, new sequences were hit hardest, but after three days the harm faded. This updates the 1975 finding by showing tolerance can build.
Bickel et al. (1991) added a twist: they removed some lights that usually help. The drug still hurt learning, proving the problem is not just missed cues.
Hatton et al. (2005) looks like a clash. They gave the same drug and saw faster extinction, not slower learning. The difference is the task: one paper tests new chains, the other tests getting rid of old ones. Same drug, opposite jobs.
Why it matters
If your client takes sedatives, watch new skill teaching closely. Break the task into tiny steps and give extra practice trials. Check if the dose changes; even small bumps can flatten the learning curve. Track data daily so you can spot slips early and adjust the plan before the skill stalls.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pigeons obtained food by making four responses on three keys in a specified sequence, e.g., left, right, center, right. Under the "tandem-learning" condition, all three keys were the same color throughout the response sequence, and the sequence was changed from session to session. After total errors per session (overall accuracy) and within-session error reduction (learning) had stabilized, the effects of varying doses phenobarbital and chlordiazepoxide were assessed. For comparison, the drug tests were also conducted under a "tandem-performance" condition, in which the response sequence was the same from session to session, and under corresponding "chain-learning" and "chain-performance" conditions, where different colored keylights were associated with the response sequence. Under all four baseline conditions, the largest dose of each drug impaired overall accuracy. Under the two learning conditions, the error rate decreased across trials within each session, but the degree of negative acceleration was less in the drug sessions than in the control sessions. In contrast, under the two performance conditions, the error rate was relatively constant across trials, but was higher in the drug sessions than in the control sessions. Of the four baselines, the chain-learning condition was the most sensitive to the drug effects.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1975 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1975.23-429