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Contributions to drug abuse research of Steven R. Goldberg’s behavioral analysis of stimulus-stimulus contingencies

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Abstract

By the mid-1960s, the concept that drugs can function as reinforcing stimuli through response-reinforcer contingencies had created a paradigm shift in drug abuse science. Steve Goldberg’s first several publications focused instead on stimulus-stimulus contingencies (respondent conditioning) in examining Abraham Wikler’s two-factor hypothesis of relapse involving conditioned withdrawal and reinforcing effects of drugs. Goldberg provided a compelling demonstration that histories of contingencies among stimuli could produce lasting withdrawal reactions in primates formerly dependent on opioids. Other studies conducted by Goldberg extended the analysis of effects of stimulus-stimulus contingencies on behavior maintained by opioid reinforcing effects and showed that withdrawal-inducing antagonist administration can produce conditioned increases in self-administration. Subsequent studies of the effects of stimuli associated with cocaine injection under second-order schedules showed that the maintenance of behavior with drug injections was in most important aspects similar to the maintenance of behavior with more conventional reinforcers when the behavior-disrupting pharmacological effects of the drugs were minimized. Studies on second-order schedules demonstrated a wide array of conditions under which behavior could be maintained by drug injection and further influenced by stimulus-stimulus contingencies. These schedules present opportunities to produce in the laboratory complex situations involving response- and stimulus-stimulus contingencies, which go beyond simplistic pairings of stimuli and more closely approximate those found with human drug abusers. A focus on the response- and stimulus-stimulus contingencies, and resulting quantifiable changes in objective and quantifiable behavioral endpoints exemplified by the studies by Steve Goldberg, remains the most promising way forward for studying problems of drug dependence.

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Notes

  1. A concerted start came with the funding of research by the Committee on Drug Addiction (of the Bureau of Social Hygiene, New York), which was later entrusted to the Committee on Drug Addiction (of the National Research Council), which morphed into what we know today as the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (Eddy, 1973; May and Jacobson, 1989).

  2. The research component was in 1948 named the Addiction Research Center when it was incorporated within the NIMH (Eddy, 1973; Gorodetsky 2014)

  3. What constitutes volitional is of course a subject that has been extensively considered within philosophical discourse, and to address it within the context of a brief scientific paper cannot do deserved justice to erudite philosophical considerations. Nonetheless, it should at least be considered that the rhesus monkeys in the Michigan colony received morphine injections contingent on presenting their hindquarters, certainly graying the distinctions between the study by Sprague and those by Seevers and colleagues.

  4. For a full account of the behavioral analysis of stimulus functions, see Catania (2013).

  5. Studies of returning Vietnam veterans would show an opposite but hypothetically consistent pattern. When returning to a very different environment, drug-taking behavior was less likely to persist (Robins et al. 1974).

  6. Despite dictates of traditional theory, the relation between reinforcer magnitude and rate of response is not simple (see for example, Catania 2013).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the organizers of the NIDA-IRP Steve Goldberg Symposium, including Antonello Bonci for funding, and particularly Zuzana Justinová, for bringing all of us together to pay tribute to a remarkable scientist and Laboratory Chief. I also thank Dr. Gianluigi Tanda and Daniela Useli for their sublime hospitality after the symposium. Jason Eaton and Marc Raley were extremely helpful in capturing figures from papers published years ago and rendering their fidelity suitable for republishing. Thanks are also due Gianluigi Tanda for comments during the preparation of my presentation for the NIDA-IRP symposium, and Drs. W.H. Morse and C-.E. Johanson for helpful comments on a previous draft of this paper. Lastly, I owe an immeasurable amount to Dr. James H. Woods for checks on my perceptions of a uniquely exciting and productive time in drug abuse science and behavioral pharmacology, for many enjoyable discussions of the materials conveyed here, as well as other topics often further afield.

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Katz, J.L. Contributions to drug abuse research of Steven R. Goldberg’s behavioral analysis of stimulus-stimulus contingencies. Psychopharmacology 233, 1921–1932 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-015-4149-x

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