Drug Discrimination and the Analysis of Private Events

A defining feature of radical behaviorism is the explicit inclusion of private events as material phenomena within a science of behavior. Surprisingly, however, despite much theorizing, there is a notable paucity within behavior analysis of controlled experimentation and analysis of private events, especially in nonhuman animals. One technique that is amenable to the study of private events is drug discrimination. For over 40 years, drug discrimination procedures have been an incredibly effective tool providing a wealth of in vivo pharmacological information about drugs including receptor selectivity, potency, and efficacy. In addition, this procedure has provided important preclinical indications of abuse liability. However, despite its prowess as a pharmacologic tool, or perhaps because of it, empirical investigation of its parameters, procedural elements, and variants is not currently an active research domain. This review highlights the drug discrimination procedure as a powerful means to systematically investigate private events by using drugs as interoceptive stimuli. In addition to the opportunity to study privacy, empirical evaluation of the drug discrimination procedure will likely inform and improve the standard practice for future endeavors in basic and clinical pharmacology.