Summary
This study provided some preliminary evidence that a deficit in the learning ability of undrugged albino rat offspring was produced by chronic drug experience early in the life of the parent animal. Offspring randomly retained from successful breedings of chronic drug females were tested on both avoidance conditioning and in a competitive avoidance situation. Experiment I demonstrated that offspring were inferior learners in comparison to the chronic drug animals. Experiment II demonstrated that offspring of prochlorperazine and trifluoperazine animals showed impairment in both learning ability and performance on competition testing while chlorpromazine offspring did not. However, the chlorpromazine females experienced difficulties in reproduction. These results were particularly unusual because the offspring never received drug administrations, because of the length of time elapsing between parental drug experience and offspring testing, and because the females were not on drugs during pregnancy.
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An earlier version of this paper describing the data from Experiment I was presented at the Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, California, September, 1968.
The authors express gratitude to Smith, Kline and French Laboratories for the supplies of prochlorperazine, trifluoperazine, and chlorpromazine used in this study.
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Gauron, E.F., Rowley, V.N. Effects on offspring behavior of mothers' early chronic drug experience. Psychopharmacologia 16, 5–15 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00405251
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00405251