ABSTRACT
Addiction researchers have long noted that Pavlovian conditioned responses (CRs) develop as a result of repeated paired presentations of an environmental stimulus (conditioned stimulus; CS) with an abused drug (unconditioned stimulus; US). For example, Pavlovian conditioned physiological reflexes and Pavlovian conditioned subjective, motivational, or emotional states are reported to develop as a function of CS-US pairings, and these physiological and emotional reactions have been proposed to account for various aspects of the drug abuse syndrome including urges, cravings, euphoria, withdrawal, and tolerance (for reviews, see Robinson & Berridge, 1993; Siegel, 1989; Tomie, 1995, 1996). It remains unclear, however, how Pavlovian conditioning of physiological reactions and subjective, emotional, and motivational states are transcribed into the narrow and repetitive motor responses that comprise the specific actions performed in consuming the drug (Robinson & Berridge, 1993). Recently, Tomie (1995, 1996) proposed that autoshaping, a particular form of Pavlovian conditioning, may provide a more precise and unified account of how the pairing of environmental stimuli with drug reward leads to directed motor and consummatory features of the abuse syndrome.
