PubMed Health⌕ Search

Biomedical subjects

Shepard Siegel

Publications and source records attributed to Shepard Siegel.

10 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

The consequences of surrendering a degree of freedom to the participant in a contingency assessment task.

Many studies of contingency judgments have used a task in which, on each trial, the participant is free either to respond or not to respond, and an outcome may, or may not, be presented. Typically, the experimenter specifies a nominal value for the contingency between responding and outcome, but the actual values of a variety of variables experienced by a particular participant depend on that participant's frequency of responding. The results of computer simulations of various strategies for implementing the contingency manipulation, and the results of an experiment, indicate that the same nominal contingency value will lead to considerable variability in the actual contingency experienced by participants. Moreover, nominal contingency manipulations are confounded with the probability that the subject experiences an outcome. While researchers might be aware of these issues, not enough attention has been paid to their potential impact.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed2005

Two views of the addiction elephant: comment on McSweeney, Murphy, and Kowal (2005).

F. K. McSweeney, E. S. Murphy, and B. P. Kowal present a convincing case that the literature on habituation and sensitization to the sensory properties of conventional reinforcers is relevant to understanding a variety of addictive behaviors. They note that their model has advantages over a number of alternative formulations. However, in discussing one particular such alternative, a Pavlovian conditioning analysis of drug tolerance and withdrawal, F. K. McSweeney et al. overstate the advantages of their reinforcer habituation/sensitization model.

Conditioning, Classical↗
PubMed2005

A signal detection analysis of contingency data.

There are many psychological tasks that involve the pairing of binary variables. The various tasks used often address different questions and are motivated by different theoretical issues and traditions. Upon closer examination, however, the tasks are remarkably similar in structure. In the present paper, we examine two such tasks, the contingency judgment task and the signal detection task, and we apply a signal detection analysis to contingency judgment data. We suggest that the signal detection analysis provides a novel interpretation of a well-established but poorly understood phenomenon of contingency judgments--the outcome-density effect.

Adult↗
PubMed2004

Intra-administration associations and withdrawal symptoms: morphine-elicited morphine withdrawal.

On the basis of a conditioning analysis, some drug "withdrawal symptoms" are conditional responses elicited by stimuli paired with the drug effect. Prior demonstrations of conditional elicitation of withdrawal symptoms evaluated the role of environmental cues; however, pharmacological cues also typically signal a drug effect. Within each administration, early drug onset cues (DOCs) may become associated with the later, larger drug effect (intra-administration associations). This experiment evaluated the contribution of intra-administration associations to withdrawal symptoms. The results indicated that (a). 5 mg/kg morphine elicited behavioral and thermic withdrawal symptoms in rats previously injected on a number of occasions with 50 mg/kg morphine and that (b). DOC-elicited withdrawal symptoms are not a sensitized response to the opiate but rather an associative phenomenon.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Ibogaine interferes with motivational and somatic effects of naloxone-precipitated withdrawal from acutely administered morphine.

It has been reported that ibogaine interferes with somatic withdrawal reactions in rats chronically treated with morphine. The present experiments demonstrated that ibogaine also interferes with motivational withdrawal reactions and somatic withdrawal reactions in rats treated with morphine on only two occasions. On each of two conditioning trials, naloxone was administered 24 h following an injection of morphine. Four hours prior to each naloxone administration, rats were injected with either ibogaine or saline. In two experiments, ibogaine interfered with naloxone-precipitated withdrawal. In Experiment 1, ibogaine-treated rats displayed a weaker aversion to the withdrawal-paired chamber, and in Experiment 2, ibogaine-treated rats displayed fewer somatic withdrawal reactions than did saline treated rats.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

Applying laboratory research: drug anticipation and the treatment of drug addiction.

Basic research concerning drug tolerance and withdrawal may inform clinical practice, and vice versa. Three areas that integrate the work of the laboratory and the clinic are discussed: (a) drug overdose, (b) cue exposure treatment of addiction, and (c) pharmacological treatment of withdrawal symptoms. The areas are related in that they indicate the contribution of drug-paired cues to the effects of addictive drugs and the role of Pavlovian conditioning of drug effects in drug tolerance and withdrawal symptoms.

Animals↗
PubMed2002

A signal detection theory analysis of the placebo effect.

Some instances of the placebo effect may be understood as a particular type of error made by the patient--a false positive error. False positive errors are common (indeed, frequently encouraged) in medical decision making, both by diagnosticians and by patients, and are the inevitable consequence of concluding that an ambiguous signal (e.g., attenuation of pain, relief of depression) did, or did not, occur. Signal detection theory (SDT) was developed to model errors in the detection of ambiguous signals. The authors use SDT to understand the false positive errors that might be made by patients administered a placebo and termed a placebo effect.

Decision Making↗
PubMed2002

Intraadministration associations: conditional hyperalgesia elicited by morphine onset cues.

There is evidence that exteroceptive cues associated with drug administration elicit conditional compensatory responding (e.g., hyperalgesia in organisms with a history of morphine administration). Recently it has become apparent that, within each administration, interoceptive early-drug onset cues (DOCs) may become associated with the later, larger drug effect (intraadministration associations). The present experiments evaluated DOC-elicited conditional hyperalgesia in rats intravenously infused with morphine. The results indicated that DOC-elicited hyperalgesia contributes to tolerance to the analgesic effect of morphine, and such DOC-elicited hyperalgesia is an associative phenomenon, rather than a sensitized response to the opiate. The findings suggest that associative analyses of tolerance should acknowledge the conditional responding elicited by DOCs, and extinction-based addiction treatments should incorporate extinction of DOC-elicited conditional responding.

Analgesics, Opioid↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Occasion setting and drug tolerance.

There is considerable evidence that drug-paired cues become associated with drug effects. It has been hypothesized that these cues act as Pavlovian conditional stimuli (CSs), and elicit conditional compensatory responses that contribute to tolerance. On the basis of a conditioning analysis of tolerance, we would expect that it should be possible to establish drug-paired cues as occasion setters, as well as conditional stimuli. Using feature-positive discrimination training, we evaluated the contribution of occasion-setting stimuli (as well as CSs) to tolerance to the hypothermic effect of ethanol in rats. The results indicated that a complete associative analysis of drug tolerance should incorporate not only the CS properties of predrug cues, but also the occasion-setting properties of such cues. The findings have implications for interpreting conflicting findings concerning extinction of tolerance and for cue-exposure treatments of addiction.

Animals↗