Addiction and Learning Adicción y Aprendizaje

Abstract

A field that has elicited a considerable interest in psychology is that which specializes in the study of phenomena related to addiction such as tolerance, compulsive search, craving and consumer drug expectancy. Particularly, recent contributions from the learning psychology have

contributed significantly to the research on drug addiction, emphasizing the need for an understanding and explanation of these phenomena as part of a structured approach to drug treatment. The aim of this paper is to present a review of the contributions from the pavlovian conditioning model regarding tolerance and addiction to drugs. One of the issues reviewed has to do with the role of associations and expectations formed between the environmental stimuli present at the time of drug administration and its effects on the organism. It is concluded that -under the optics of the pavlovian model- the environmental stimuli produce a conditioned compensatory response, which is responsible for the development of tolerance, as well as expectation and drugs search.