Antianxiety agents and emotional behavior: An information processing analysis

• 1.

  1. Various paradigms which are considered to produce and measure fear, anxiety, frustration and aggression in non-human animals are briefly reviewed.

• 2.

  2. The efficacy of antianxiety drugs in these paradigms is discussed. It is clear that the tasks investigators have devised to measure emotion may be measuring several effects of antianxiety drugs.

• 3.

  3. An information processing model is proposed therefore, to bring about a clearer understanding of the effects of antianxiety agents on human and non-human animals.

• 4.

  4. Among the five stages of information processing considered, the stimulus selection, response selection and response inhibition stages are considered important to understanding antianxiety drug effects.