Abstract
This paper reviews the impact on behavioural pharmacology of experimental methods and modes of interpretation derived from the work of B. F. Skinner. The techniques of operant conditioning have been widely used to enrich the database of behavioural pharmacology. Their use has repeatedly demonstrated that the effects of a drug on behaviour are schedule‐dependent, i.e. they depend on the characteristics of the behaviour against which the drug is assessed and thus on the environmental determinants of behaviour, as well as on the pharmacological characteristics of the drug and its effects on physiological systems. This major empirical contribution is illustrated by reference to studies of the effects of past behavioural and pharmacological experience, the reinforcing effects of drugs, and the stimulus properties of drugs. Such empirical findings call into question any assumption that the behavioural effects of drugs can be reduced to exclusively pharmacological explanations. They therefore also make a fundamental contribution to the theoretical base of a truly interdisciplinary science of behavioural pharmacology, and make contact with Skinner's non‐reductionistic theoretical analyses of behaviour.
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