Amylobarbitone and forgetting.

In an earlier report (Hulme et al. 1979), we argued that sodium amylobarbitone (SAB) affects the acquisition of information. That conclusion was based on the finding that SAB produces rates of forgetting that are similar to control, thereby ruling out storage (and possibly retrieval) deficiencies which would predict dissimilar rates. However, it is possible that the rate of forgetting is itself influenced by the amount of information that actually entered store in the first place, and SAB reduces this by affecting acquisition. The possibility that both acquisition and storage could therefore have been affected was explored by equating control and drug zero delay performance, which was achieved by lowering the performance of control subjects. Nonetheless, subsequent rates of forgetting remained similar, thereby strengthening the acquistion hypothesis.