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EFFECTS OF d‐AMPHETAMINE, DIAZEPAM, AND PENTOBARBITAL ON THE SCHEDULE‐CONTROLLED PECKING AND LOCOMOTOR ACTIVITY OF PIGEONS
Author(s) -
Bordi Fabio,
Matthews T. James
Publication year - 1990
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1901/jeab.1990.53-87
Subject(s) - pecking order , pentobarbital , amphetamine , diazepam , locomotor activity , psychology , stimulus (psychology) , neuroscience , pharmacology , developmental psychology , medicine , cognitive psychology , biology , psychiatry , evolutionary biology , dopamine
Pigeons were trained on a variant of the autoshaping procedure devised by Matthews and Lerer (1987) in which a keylight stimulus ramp of increasing brightness signaled the passing of a 30‐s interfood interval. This procedure generates two distinct behavioral components: key pecking and locomotor activity. The effects of three psychoactive drugs on these behavior classes were measured. d ‐Amphetamine had negligible effects on both types of behavior, whereas diazepam and pentobarbital increased key pecking and decreased activity in a dose‐dependent fashion. In Experiment 2, the possibility that drug effects were suppressed by excessively strong stimulus control exerted in Experiment 1 was tested by decreasing the discriminability of the stimulus ramp. The direction of the effects of diazepam and pentobarbital was the same as in Experiment 1 but the magnitude of the effects tended to be larger. The effects of d ‐amphetamine, however, remained quite small, suggesting that, under these conditions, locomotor activity and key pecking are less sensitive to d ‐amphetamine. In Experiments 3 and 4, key pecking was eliminated by removing the keylight. Reinforcers were presented at fixed intervals in Experiment 3 and at variable intervals in Experiment 4. The drug effects on activity observed in Experiments 1 and 2 disappeared in both Experiments 3 and 4. The results suggest that diazepam and pentobarbital affect activity indirectly by increasing key‐pecking behavior, which, in turn, competitively decreases activity.