Determinants of drug effects on punished responding.

The effects of drugs on punished responding depend on interactions among a large number of experimental variables. Among these variables are the drug history of the animal, the dose of the drug administered, the type of stimulus used to punish responding, the intensity and duration of the punishing stimulus, the schedule of presentation of the punishing stimulus, the control rate and pattern of punished responding, the schedule of positive reinforcement maintaining the punished responding, the species of animal, the deprivation state of the animal, the behavioral history of the animal, and the nature of the required response. Although it is not known how all of these variables interact to determine the effect of drugs on punished responding, there is evidence that many of these variables are important as determinants of drug effects. The task facing behavioral pharmacologists studying drug effects on punished responding is to determine under what conditions drugs produce their characteristic effects on punished responding.