Dextroamphetamine and individual susceptibility to reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning.

The present investigation was designed to study the relationships between extraversion, d-amphetamine and modes of reinforcement in verbal operant conditioning. A factorial design involving two levels of extraversion (extraverts and introverts), two reinforcement conditions ('good' and 'electric shock') and three treatments (placebo and two doses, 7.5 and 12.5 mg, of d-amphetamine) with repeated measures on the last factor was used. Sixty postgraduate female students were individually subjected to Taffel's verbal conditioning procedure. The study supported the following conclusions: (1) under the placebo condition, the extraverted subjects condition better with the rewarding reinforcer while the introverted subjects condition better with the punishing reinforcer; (2) under the influence of d-amphetamine, the extraverted subjects condition better with the punishing reinforcer while the conditioning scores of introverted subjects decrease with the punishing reinforcer but are not influenced with the rewarding reinforcer.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes