Cocaine and Selective Associations: Investigations into a Biological Constraint on Learning with Drug Self-administration and Shock Avoidance as Reinforcers

When a tone-light compound was a discriminative stimulus for cocaine-reinforced responding, the light gained most of the control over responding. In contrast, when the compound was an aversive SD for shock-avoidance, tone control increased. In previous studies, tone control also increased when the tone-light compound was made aversive by signaling food-absence. However, that was not the case in Experiment 2 where tone-light signaled cocaine-absence. Experiment 1 produced an interincentive (cocaine vs. shock) selective association with drug self-administration maintained behavior for the first time. This extends the generality of the selective association biological constraint on learning to self-administered drugs. Copyright Information: