Reversal and nonreversal shifts under amphetamine

Rats were trained in a Y maze on a two-choice simultaneous brightness discrimination with light as S⁺ and dark as S^– (position irrelevant). Half of the animals were then switched to reversal, where the reinforcement contingencies of the original training were reversed, and the other half were switched to nonreversal, in which they learned a simultaneous right-left discrimination. Nonreversal was acquired faster than reversal in saline injected animals. The administration of 1 mg/kg d-amphetamine did not affect the acquisition of the initial brightness discrimination and of nonreversal. In contrast, the drug facilitated dramatically reversal learning.The results indicate that amphetamine enhances the attention to, or the associability of, the discriminative stimuli, leading to rapid learning to these stimuli under changed contingencies of reinforcement.Offprint request to: I. Weiner