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Book Review : Psychopharmacology and Reaction Time

This book was a great disappointment. I picked it up hoping, as the back cover led me to believe, that I would find ’many ideas on how to translate [my, or at least my colleagues’] research aims into reliable experimental designs, develop existing models and work towards the guaranteed validity of RT [reaction time] measurements’. The volume consists of fourteen chapters. Of these, five contain no pharmacological data, in two the data from the drugs is of so little consequence that it does not feature in the discussion sections, and two of the remaining chapters are general reviews. A chapter by Laming, for example, is a concise and readable review of his theory of the influence of prior correct or incorrect decisions on subsequent reaction time; however, to state that ’the potential indicators of pharmacological effect look to be very sensitive’ hardly invests the chapter with pharmacological relevance. Even the chapters which do contain drug data are less than successful. The volume is compiled of articles based on a conference which took place in September 1985, with the result that it fails to address the recently expanded interest in drug-induced enhancement of cognitive performance, and the important question of whether such enhancement is possible. This field is in need of theoretical underpinning, and it is to be hoped that the authors have adapted their elegant methods to the area in recent years. Furthermore, the book does not appear to be aimed at the psychopharmacologist or pharmacologist as typified by the contributors to the Journal of Psychopharmacology. That is not to say that cognitive psychologists should be expected to quote data on molecular biology, receptor binding or the effects of the drugs they are studying on the hippocampal slice, but an acknowledgement that there has been progress in neuroscience in the last 15 years, perhaps by using more precise neuroscientific terminology, rather than, say ’tranquillizers’ and ’hypnotics’, would have been a start. A more obvious awareness of pharmacology would also have been helpful. For example, Broadbent reports that the effect of drugs on reaction