Repeated diazepam administration: effects on the acquisition and performance of response chains in humans.
Diazepam blunts new learning more than old habits, but tolerance kicks in fast.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Nine healthy adults learned new 5-step response chains on a computer. They got 80 mg of diazepam each day over the study period.
The task: press buttons in the right order to earn money. Some chains stayed the same each day. Others changed daily.
What they found
Diazepam made learning new chains harder. Errors jumped on day 1. By day 3, the drug barely hurt learning.
Old chains stayed mostly intact. Familiar moves survived the drug better than brand-new ones.
How this fits with other research
Joyce et al. (1988) saw the same pattern with scopolamine in rats. Both drugs hurt within-session learning, not old habits.
Hatton et al. (2005) used a cousin drug, chlordiazepoxide, to speed up extinction. Together the papers show benzodiazepines weaken new learning but leave stamped-in behavior alone.
Muller et al. (2016) proved rats can chunk long chains using many cues. K et al. now show humans under diazepam lose that flexibility for fresh chains.
Why it matters
If a client takes benzodiazepines, teach new skills slowly and expect faster progress after a few days. Keep old routines running—they resist the drug. Track acquisition errors separately from performance errors to spot true learning problems versus sedation.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The effects of repeated diazepam administration (80 mg) were assessed across a 12-hr time course with humans responding under a two-component multiple schedule of repeated acquisition and performance of response sequences. Subjects resided in an inpatient clinical research ward for the duration of the study. In each component of the multiple schedule, subjects completed sequences of 10 responses in a predetermined order using three keys of a numeric keypad. In the acquisition component, a new response sequence was to be acquired each session. In the performance component, the response sequence always remained the same. After stable responding was obtained and the effects of the placebo assessed, diazepam was administered for 3 consecutive days. The effects of repeated diazepam administration on overall percentage of errors across the two components of the multiple schedule were selective. In the acquisition component, the first dose of diazepam increased percentage errors with the magnitude of effects decreasing across the second and third days of diazepam administration. In the performance component, the percentage of errors was either minimally affected across all 3 days of diazepam administration or substantively increased on Day 1 with subsequent diazepam administrations having minimal effects. Effects on response rate were not selective. Diazepam decreased rates of responding in both schedule components, with the magnitude of effects decreasing across successive administrations. These results replicate previous findings in humans and nonhumans on the selective effects of diazepam on acquisition versus performance baselines. Also, the results suggest that the selective effects do not result from differences in reinforcement rate. Finally, the present results demonstrate that the selective recovery from repeated drug administration previously demonstrated in nonhumans using a repeated acquisition arrangement has generality to human behavior.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1989 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1989.52-47