This review contains the proceedings from a symposium held at the RSA conference in 2003 on "Alcohol Withdrawal and Conditioning." The presentations covered a range of interactions between conditioning and alcohol withdrawal, in both animal behavior and the clinic. Dr. D.N. Stephens first described his studies exploring the consequences of alcohol dependence and repeated experience of withdrawal on the conditioning process. His data suggested that repeated withdrawal from moderate alcohol intake impairs amygdala-dependent mechanisms for learning about aversive events. Dr. H. Becker then detailed studies examining the consequences of repeated ethanol withdrawal experience on subsequent ethanol drinking behavior in mice, and conditions in which motivational properties of odor cues that are associated with different phases of ethanol withdrawal influence such relapse behavior. The data suggested that cues associated with acute withdrawal or "recovery" from withdrawal may serve as modulating factors in influencing subsequent ethanol drinking behavior, and that the timing of the cues determines their consequences. Dr. F. Weiss described recent findings from animal models of relapse that suggested the efficacy of alcohol-associated contextual stimuli in eliciting alcohol-seeking behavior resembles the endurance of conditioned cue reactivity and cue-induced cocaine craving in humans. The interactive effects of stress and ethanol-related environmental stimuli were found to be dependent on concurrent activation of endogenous opioid and corticotropin-releasing factor systems. Conditioning factors (i.e., exposure to drug-associated stimuli) and stress could therefore interact to augment vulnerability to relapse. Dr. C. Drummond then addressed the clinical aspects of conditioning during alcohol withdrawal and described studies showing exposure of alcoholics to alcohol-related cues elicited greater subjective and physiological responses than exposure to neutral cues. The former responsivity showed a relationship with a measure of motivation to drink alcohol. Finally, Dr. C. Cunningham provided a summary of the concepts involved in the presentations and discussed the conditioning processes that affect behavior during and after alcohol withdrawal.

No abstract

Verbally competent volunteers, 6 male and 6 female, served as participants. They were exposed to two experimental procedures. Initially two nonsense syllables (A2 and C1) were paired with positive adjectives and two nonsense syllables (A 1 and C2) were paired with negative adjectives, using a procedure analogous to classical conditioning. Following this they were exposed to a stimulus equivalence training procedure. They were taught to match three nonsense syllables A 1, A2, and A3 to three novel nonsense syllables 81, 82, and 83 respectively, and subsequently to match 81, 82, and 83 to three new nonsense syllables C1, C2, and C3. Testing revealed that the equivalence class involving entirely neutral stimuli (A3, 83, and C3) emerged for most participants but that the classes involving A and C stimuli that had acquired opposite meanings from the first procedure did not emerge.A new direction for the study of the equivalence phenomenon has emerged because of the failures on the task by language-competent adults that appear to be caused by prior learning. Watt, Keenan, Barnes, and Cairns (1991) demonstrated that an individual's social history can interfere with equivalence responding. Their study was set in the context of Northern Ireland's (NI) political situation. This situation gives rise to two distinct social identities, Catholics and Protestants. Both groups identify and categorize "their own" and "others" using a wide variety of cues, for example, a person's name, or the community they live in (Cairns, 1980). Watt et al. used procedures developed in the study of stimulus equivalence to examine the relations that exist between stimuli and responses within this social context. Six NI Protestant participants and twelve NI Catholic participants served as the experimental group and five English students served as the control group. Participants were trained to relate three Catholic names to three nonsense syllables and then to relate the nonsense syllables to three Protestant symbols, for example: "Brendan Doherty" > "Zid" and then "Zid" > "Lambeg Drum."PartiCipants were then tested to determine whether the Protestant Reprint requests should be sent to Maeve Bracken, Department of Applied Social Studies, University of Paisley, High St. , Paisley PA 1 2BE. Scotland.