Aesoon Park

• Ph.D.
• Professor (Full) at Syracuse University

Purpose of Review This paper aimed to estimate pooled bi-directional associations between multidimensional sleep health and substance use among youth and investigate whether these associations differed as a function of race/ethnicity. Recent Findings Empirical observational studies providing quantitative data on the association of sleep health (du...

Background The Positive Drinking Consequences Questionnaire (PDCQ) was developed to measure positive consequences of alcohol use endorsed by college drinkers. Efforts to assess positive drinking consequences experienced by adolescents have been much more limited. The aim of the present study was to advance the psychometric testing and evaluation of...

Objective: Eight percent of college students report past year prescription stimulant misuse (nonmedical use of stimulants defined as taking stimulants in a manner other than prescribed). Despite this high prevalence rate, primary prevention efforts are lacking on college campuses. Participants and Methods: A prescription stimulant misuse primary pr...

Background and aims: Although multiracial people comprise the fastest growing population in the United States, multiracial youth are nearly invisible in alcohol research. This meta-analysis synthesized the youth alcohol literature to estimate the magnitude of difference in alcohol use as a function of multiracial status. Design and measurements:...

Solitary cannabis use has been associated with greater cannabis problems than social use and may be increasingly prevalent due to pandemic-related isolation. However, little is known about patterns, correlates, and consequences of solitary cannabis use. This study sought to characterize solitary cannabis use since pandemic onset, examine psychosoci...

Aims: Racial variability in associations of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage and neighborhood disorder with adolescent health risk behaviors remains under-researched, which this study examined over 1 year among racially diverse adolescents. Methods: High school students (N = 345; 18% Asian, 44% Black, 16% Multiracial, 22% White) completed...

Objective: Performance of Cognitive Refocusing Treatment for Insomnia (CRT-I) relative to stimulus control treatment (SCT) remains unknown among college students. This pilot trial compared single-session, electronic-based, peer-led CRT-I to SCT, and as well as awareness-based (AC) and no-treatment (NTC) controls. Participants: College students (...

Objective: Alcohol and cannabis use progression milestones in adolescence (such as ages at first use, first intoxication and at onset of regular use) may inform the development of alcohol and cannabis use disorders. Although parent, sibling, and peer behavior and alcohol-related cognitions have been shown to be associated with alcohol milestone att...

Introduction Adolescents are at risk for both sleep problems and cannabis use. Despite emerging evidence for college students’ self-medication with cannabis to help sleep, generalizability to earlier developmental stages remains unknown. This study remedied this literature gap by characterizing high school students’ cannabis sleep aid use in terms...

Background and objectives: Discrimination due to race and/or ethnicity can be a pervasive stressor for Black college students in the United States beyond general negative life events and has demonstrated associations with adverse health and alcohol outcomes. Genetics may confer individual differences in the risk of drinking to cope with discrimina...

Introduction: Emerging evidence suggests that cannabis use has increased since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many cannabis users report using at a greater frequency and attribute this change in part to a desire to cope with changes to mental health (e.g., depression, social anxiety) and stress associated with the pandemic. Despite increases i...

Introduction: Emerging evidence suggests that cannabis is commonly used to aid sleep among college students. Although outcome expectancies have been associated with the progression of cannabis use, sleep-related expectancies have not been included in widely-used cannabis expectancy measures. Recently, the Sleep-Related Cannabis Expectancies Questio...

Objective: Adolescents are at high risk for alcohol and cannabis use. Emerging evidence suggests that discrimination exposure is prospectively associated with risk for alcohol use among adolescents of marginalized race, sexual orientation, or gender identity. However, it is unknown whether prospective discrimination-substance use associations among...

Autistic individuals show enhanced perceptual functioning on many behavioral tasks. Neurophysiological evidence also supports the conclusion that autistic individuals utilize perceptual processes to a greater extent than neurotypical comparisons to support problem solving and reasoning; however, how atypicalities in early perceptual processing infl...

Background Prenatal alcohol exposure has been linked to a host of negative outcomes, although it is largely unknown whether prenatal exposure leads to an earlier age of initiation of alcohol use or exacerbates early alcohol initiation. The current study examined whether adolescents exposed to heavy drinking during gestation began drinking earlier t...

Autistic individuals show enhanced perceptual functioning on many behavioral tasks. Neurophysiological evidence also supports the conclusion that autistic individuals utilize perceptual processes to a greater extent than neurotypical comparisons to support problem solving and reasoning; however, how atypicalities in early perceptual processing infl...

Objective: Racial discrimination is a known risk factor for alcohol-related outcomes among young Black American adults. However, vicarious racial discrimination’s associations with alcohol-related outcomes and the role of racial identity in these associations remain unknown. This within-subject experiment study tested whether associations of vicari...

It has been suggested that nighttime nicotine withdrawal may help to explain why tobacco cigarette smokers are more likely than nonsmokers to experience clinically significant insomnia. There is also reason to believe that intolerance for withdrawal symptoms could play a role in withdrawal-related sleep disturbance. However, we are not aware of any...

Objective: Research has consistently found associations between sleep characteristics and cardiovascular disease risk in children, adolescents, and adults. Although primarily investigated in clinical samples (e.g., in those with sleep disorders), greater left ventricular mass is associated with poor sleep quality in non-clinical adult populations...

Objective: Developmental theory posits interacting individual and contextual factors that contribute to alcohol use across adolescence. Despite the well-documented salience of peer environmental influences on adolescent drinking, it is not known whether peer environments moderate polygenic risks for trajectories of alcohol use. The current theoret...

Mounting evidence suggests that multiracial adolescents may be at greater risk than their monoracial peers for both sleep problems and alcohol use. However, mechanisms underlying these uniquely-heightened risky health behaviors among multiracial adolescents remain a gap in the literature. This cross-sectional study examined a risk pathway involving...

Background: Vacationing provides potential recovery from work stress and is associated with cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality. This study considered psychological variables that might change as a vacation is approaching (fade-in) or after a vacation ends (fade-out) and how these associations might vary as a function of ongoing work st...

Objective: This study investigates whether the reciprocal associations between negative life events and drinking over time differ as a function of 5-HTTLPR (5-hydroxytryptamine [serotonin] transporter-linked polymorphic region) genotype (i.e., candidate gene and environment interaction and correlation) using large and population-based prospective...

A growing body of literature demonstrates that cannabis is commonly used to aid sleep. Consistent with social cognitive theory, there is a vast literature documenting the role of outcome expectancies in the initiation, progression, and maintenance of cannabis use. Despite the readily endorsed belief that cannabis will help improve sleep, sleep-rela...

Background Most research on prescription stimulant misuse has focused on college students, and research on high school-aged adolescents is limited. Objectives This study aimed to characterize risk correlates of prescription stimulant misuse among a racially-diverse and socioeconomically-disadvantaged sample of urban adolescents. Method Cross-sect...

Objective: Comorbid ADHD and substance use disorder (SUD) presents frequently in adolescence, a developmental period that may promote the emergence of substance misuse among individuals with ADHD. Comorbid ADHD and SUD in adolescence results in significant and unique treatment challenges, necessitating examination into effective interventions. Meth...

As the number of adolescents seeking treatment for marijuana use increases, it is important to identify factors that mediate marijuana treatment outcomes. Alcohol consumption is highly prevalent in clinical samples of adolescents but has been neglected as a potential mediator of marijuana use treatment outcomes. In this study, we sought to examine...

HIV-related stigma and beliefs about medication necessity and concerns have separately demonstrated significant associations with antiretroviral adherence in people with HIV. However, no work has examined both of these associations in the same model. Based on the necessity-concerns framework, this study examined four alternative models of relations...

Objective: One in 5 college students use substances such as cannabis and/or alcohol to help sleep. Despite this high prevalence of sleep aid use, there remains a lack of research on the potential day-to-day sleep- and substance-related consequences. The current study examined associations of cannabis and alcohol sleep aid use with subsequent sleep...

Objective: Poor sleep quality and insufficient total sleep time have been shown to modify the relationship between college drinking and negative drinking consequences. This study aimed to examine whether prospective associations between risky drinking and negative drinking consequences similarly differ by sleep-related functional impairment, which...

Introduction Little is known about real-time pre-sleep experiences in the natural environment and there is a need for cost-effective and efficient methods to evaluate pre-sleep experiences and sleep patterns in the natural setting. This study tested a novel smartphone application, the Sleep Experience and Assessment Application (SEAA), which emits...

Introduction Multiracial (versus monoracial) youth may be at increased risk for adverse health outcomes, including sleep problems and risky alcohol use. Theoretical frameworks (e.g., Integrative Temporal Model of Youth Sleep and Substance Problems; Edwards et al. 2015) posit that exposure to stressors induces emotional dysregulation, which in turn...

Introduction The current study piloted the Sleep Experiences and Assessment Application (SEAA), a smartphone application developed for cost-effective, naturalistic, event-level assessment of pre-sleep experiences. The SEAA delivers audible prompts immediately before sleep and throughout the sleep period, which users respond to by verbally recording...

Aims: The current meta-analysis tested independent and composite associations of three commonly studied alcohol metabolism alleles with alcohol use disorder (AUD) within East Asians as well as characterized potential moderating factors in these associations. Methods: For meta-analysis, 32 articles were selected that investigated ALDH2 (n = 17,75...

Background and Aims Findings of the association between racial discrimination and alcohol use and related consequences are inconsistent and the role of potential moderators in the association is largely unknown. This meta‐analysis aimed to synthesize the discrimination‐alcohol literature among Black Americans, estimate magnitude of associations, an...

Aims: The current candidate gene and environment interaction (cGxE) study examined whether the effects of an experimentally manipulated psychosocial stressor on self-reported drinking urge and implicit attentional bias for alcohol cues differ as a function of a cumulative genetic score of 5-HTTLPR, MAO-A, DRD4, DAT1 and DRD2 genotypes. The current...

Background and Objectives Youth drinking is a pervasive public health concern with serious negative developmental implications. Candidate gene and environment interaction studies (cGxE) show that environmental effects on drinking behaviors may differ by individuals’ genotypes. Yet little is known about whether genetic and environmental effects on d...

Introduction College students are at increased risk for poor sleep quality and associated functioning problems compared to non-college peers. Emerging evidence suggests that as many as 25% of college students self-medicate their sleep problems with alcohol and/or marijuana. Despite this high prevalence, existing research on the correlates and conse...

Background: Health literacy is crucial to develop health-related knowledge, adopt healthy lifestyles, and benefit from health care services. However, research on the association between health literacy and adolescent health outcomes, particularly on their prospective associations, is rare. We assessed health literacy using 3 validated measures, an...

Background: The presence of heavy drinking peers may trigger genetic vulnerabilities to alcohol use. Limited correlational findings, albeit mixed as a function of age, suggest that carriers of a μ-opioid receptor (OPRM1) G allele may be more vulnerable than noncarriers to alcohol-promoting perceived peer environments. However, research has not yet...

Objectives: Experiences of racial discrimination have been associated with diverse negative health outcomes among racial minorities. However, extant findings of the association between racial discrimination and alcohol behaviors among Black college students are mixed. The current study examined mediating roles of depressive symptoms and coping drin...

Objective/background: College students are at an increased risk for poor sleep and associated sleep problems. Emerging evidence suggests that a substantial subset of college students self-medicate with alcohol, marijuana, and/or over-the-counter medications to help sleep. The current study identified demographic, psychosocial, and sleep- and alcoh...

Background: Black young adults have lower rates of alcohol use than other racial groups. Genetic factors may protect against drinking. Specifically, the ADH1B*3 allele is present almost exclusively in Black populations and has been protective against alcohol use and alcohol use disorder. The protective effects of the ADH1B*3 allele, however, may d...

Background and objectives: Although alcohol-facilitating social environmental factors, such as alcohol offers and high perceived peer drinking norms, have been extensively studied as determinants of college drinking, their role among college students of African descent remains understudied. Furthermore, gene-environment interaction research sugges...

Background Research regarding the role of gender in relations between family characteristics and health risk behaviors has been limited. PurposeThis study aims to investigate gender differences in associations between family processes and risk-taking in adolescents. Methods Adolescents (N = 249; mean age = 14.5 years) starting their first year at a...

Studies have shown that motivation to change is related to better substance use outcomes among treatment-seeking adolescents. Goal setting, which may be related to motivation, also has been shown to be associated with positive treatment outcomes. However, relationships between motivation and goal setting as mediators of change in cannabis use over...

Although the many positive and negative psychosocial consequences of alcohol use are well documented, evidence of the association between prior drinking consequences and subsequent alcohol-related outcomes is mixed. Social learning theory highlights that cognitive appraisals of prior drinking consequences play a crucial intermediate role in the rel...

Peer drinking norms are arguably one of the strongest correlates of adolescent drinking. Prospective studies indicate that adolescents tend to select peers based on drinking (peer selection) and their peers' drinking is associated with changes in adolescent drinking over time (peer socialization). The present study investigated whether the peer sel...

Although a small number of studies characterized cross-sectional associations between sleep hygiene and insomnia severity, no prior study has examined their relationships prospectively. Further, the relationship between sleep hygiene and insomnia severity among college students has rarely been examined. This study examined the prevalence of diverse...

Aims: To investigate whether the effects of family conflict on adolescent drinking differed as a function of 5-hydroxy tryptamine transporter-linked polymorphic region (5-HTTLPR) genotype cross-sectionally and prospectively in two independent samples of adolescents. Design: Path analysis and multi-group analysis of two prospective datasets were...

Objective: Although the association of impulsivity with diverse alcohol outcomes has been documented, the mechanisms by which impulsivity predicts drinking over time remain to be fully characterized. The authors examined whether positive drinking consequences, but not negative drinking consequences, mediated the association between impulsivity and...

Prenatal tobacco exposure, through maternal smoking during pregnancy, has been associated with adverse mental health outcomes in childhood. However, the mechanisms by which prenatal tobacco exposure compromises mental health later in life are unclear. We hypothesized that sensitized reactivity to stressful life events in early childhood mediates th...

Recent literature has indicated the importance of positive psychosocial drinking consequences in college drinking. However, it has not yet been characterized whether prior experiences of positive drinking consequences would predict subsequent drinking, over and above the anticipation of positive outcomes from drinking (i.e., positive alcohol expect...

Abstract Strategies used to control unwanted thoughts during the evening have been shown to be significantly associated with insomnia, a common problem associated with numerous negative consequences. This study examined whether nighttime thought control strategies would predict insomnia severity among 460 college students (mean age = 18.8, 61 % fem...

Identifying factors that modify responsiveness to pharmacotherapies for alcohol dependence is important for treatment planning. Cigarette smoking predicts more severe alcohol dependence and poorer treatment response in general. Nevertheless, there is limited research on cigarette smoking as a potential predictor of differential response to pharmaco...

The manifestation of alcohol dependence at different developmental stages may be associated with different genetic and environmental factors. Taking a developmental approach, we characterized interaction between the dopamine receptor 4 variable number tandem repeat (DRD4 VNTR) polymorphism and developmentally specific environmental factors (childho...

Risky drinking among college students differs as a function of living types, with living at Greek houses as a major risk factor. Both self-selection based on prior drinking and socialization through living environments have been shown to account for this association. However, it is not clear whether selection and socialization processes occur as a...

Heavy drinkers prior to college have been shown to increase their drinking in college via their self-selection into the Greek societies and subsequent Greek influence on their drinking. This study characterized the dual mechanisms underlying these processes: (a) the Greek selection on the basis of personality and precollege drinking and (b) the Gre...

Research shows high comorbidity between Cluster B Personality Disorders (PDs) and Alcohol Use Disorders (AUDs). Studies of personality traits and alcohol use have identified coping and enhancement drinking motives as mediators of the relation among impulsivity, negative affectivity or affectivity instability, and alcohol use. To the extent that cer...

This study aimed to resolve the direction of the relation between Greek affiliation and substance use by taking advantage of the quasi-experimental nature of change in college fraternity/sorority affiliation. Precollege individual differences and college substance use were examined as a function of time-varying Greek status to characterize self-sel...

Despite public recognition of the hazards of 21st birthday drinking, there is little empirical information concerning its prevalence, severity, and risk factors. Data from a sample of 2,518 college students suggest that 21st birthday drinking poses an extreme danger: (a) 4 of every 5 participants (83%) reported drinking to celebrate, (b) birthday d...

Research shows high comorbidity between Cluster B personality disorders (PDs) and alcohol use disorders (AUDs). Studies on personality traits and alcohol use have identified coping and enhancement drinking motives as mediators in the relations among impulsivity, affective instability, and alcohol use. To the extent that PDs reflect extreme expressi...

Although the environmental influence of Greek affiliation on drinking has been established, little is known about intrapersonal characteristics that make individuals susceptible to this influence. Self-consciousness (attending to one's self) was hypothesized to represent dispositional vulnerability to environmental influence. The potential moderati...

For most of the American population, the college years represent the period of life associated with the highest levels of alcohol consumption and, most likely, the highest prevalence of alcohol use disorders during the lifespan (Grant, 1997). Recent research has focused increasingly on college student drinking. For example, a combined PsycINFO/Medl...