Effects of a Salivary Inhibitor and Facilitator upon Food Intake
This research stems from recent attempts to manipulate directly the fractional anticipatory goal response as manifested by salivation. Lewis, Butler, and Diamond (1958) reported evidence suggesting that oral administrations of pilocarpine, a parasympathetic excitant, and benzocaine, a topical anesthetic, produce differential response strengths. These differences are presumably due to the facilitation of salivation and its response-produced cues by pilocarpine, and a depression or obliteration of these cues by benzocaine. Such findings are commensurate with current theory which holds that during the course of conditioning trials fractions of the total goal responses become anticipatory and that stimuli from the fractional anticipatory goal response become directly conditioned to the instrumental response. In an attempt to determine if the differences observed by Lewis, et al. (1958) could be due to side effects of the drugs used, Lewis and McIntire (1959) found that none of the drugs had a differential effect on activity. There remains, however, the possibility that these drugs, and the bases in which they appear, change the acceptability of food used as a reward, i.e., pilocarpine may enhance the acceptability while benzocaine detracts, or vice versa. The purpose of this study was to determine if these drugs result in significant difference in the amount of food eaten.