Discrimination Learning with Drug Stimuli: Methods and Applications

It is the intent of this chapter to selectively review data pertaining to the phenomenon of drug-discrimination learning (DDL), i.e., discriminative control of behavior by drug states. A related phenomenon is state-dependent learning (SDL), i.e., the observation that a behavior learned in one particular state is not easily retrievable unless the state present during the initial learning episode is reinstated. Colpaert (1977)13 argued that DDL and SDL are different phenomena, whereas others assume that both phenomena basically reflect the same properties of drugs, intensity (i.e., dose) being a major factor (J�rbe, 1986 67 , 1987 68 ).