About
72
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Introduction
I am broadly interested in the etiology of addictions (including behavioral addictions) and the psychopharmacology of drugs, as well as in aggression and self-harm (and in other behaviors related to impulsivity and self-regulation).
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2016 - present
Position
- Professor (Associate)
Description
- I currently teach History and Systems of Psychology, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, and Personality.
August 2016 - present
Position
- Professor (Assistant)
Description
- Director of the Disposition, Emotion, & Addiction Research (DEAR) Laboratory
July 2013 - June 2016
Education
August 2005 - August 2012
August 2003 - May 2005
August 1997 - May 2002
Publications
Publications (72)
Though anxiety sensitivity (AS)—fear of anxiety-related experiences—is primarily tied to anxiety vulnerability, AS has also been prospectively associated with general negative affect and depression. Furthermore, depression has been longitudinally associated with different forms of substance use, and some AS subfactors (e.g., cognitive concerns) hav...
Some prior research has suggested that the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene may amplify responses related to life stress (e.g., depression and anxiety) or associated with negative moods (e.g., self-harm and diminished cognitive functioning). The purpose of this study was to investigate whether stress/mood-related associations with depr...
Prior theory and research suggest that both Cluster-B personality pathology and trait impulsivity are indirectly associated with alcohol use through positive alcohol expectancies. Yet, no prior study has investigated whether features of each of the Cluster-B personality disorders (i.e., antisocial, borderline, histrionic, and narcissistic) and rash...
Objective: To investigate demographics, sport type, athletic identity, and COVID-19 sport season cancelation in relation to alcohol consumption among college student athletes shortly after the pandemic emerged. Participants: College student athletes recruited from U.S. athletic departments. Methods: Survey data were collected from 5,915 college stu...
Anxiety sensitivity (AS)—fearfulness of anxiety symptoms—has been implicated in the etiology of emotional disorders (e.g., depressive and anxiety disorders) and linked to cigarette smoking and other substance use (SU). However, studies examining AS in relation to SU primarily have been conducted with racially/ethnically heterogeneous or mostly Euro...
Background:
Individuals with depression symptoms have a harder time quitting smoking. High negative affect and low positive affect are core depression symptoms and arise following cigarette abstinence. Investigating associations of biological markers with negative and positive affect may provide valuable information about factors relevant to smoki...
We examined whether the analgesic effect of alcohol mediates the association between alcohol and deliberate self-harm (DSH) using data from a larger study on alcohol effects. Men (n = 106) and women (n = 104) low-risk alcohol drinkers (ages M = 26.00, SD = 6.98) recruited from the community who had no suicide attempt or episode of deliberate self-h...
Introduction
Alcohol consumption on college campuses is a major public health concern. Extant literature has identified trauma exposure as a robust risk factors for problematic alcohol use in this at-risk population. However, the mechanisms underlying this association are less well-studied. Research indicates that bodily arousal is a fundamental fe...
Anhedonia—diminished interest and pleasure in response to rewards—may be a symptom of tobacco withdrawal that is understudied in priority populations. This experiment investigated the magnitude and correlates of various dimensions of anhedonia during tobacco withdrawal among African–American (AA) smokers—a population subject to health disparities....
Objective:
High negative affect, low positive affect, and low cognitive functioning are depression-related states that may be particularly relevant to females who smoke cigarettes and may be more prominent following overnight tobacco abstinence. This study aimed to assess relations between depression symptom levels and negative affect, positive aff...
Adolescents form perceptions of why their parents and friends drink alcohol that may impact adolescents’ own drinking motives. This study tested whether perceived drinking motives of parents and friends are associated with adolescents’ own drinking motives. Participants included community-recruited adolescents 14–17 years (N = 105; 63.8% female) wh...
Tobacco addiction and obsessive-compulsive symptoms (OCS; intrusive thoughts or impulses that cause distress and rituals) are both mediated by compulsivity and negative reinforcement. Little evidence exists to guide theory, research, treatment, and population-based prevention of this co-occurrence. We propose a conceptual model of OCS-smoking co-oc...
The 1st cigarette of the day is strongly tied to tobacco dependence. However, prior research has not investigated whether within-subject (WS) day-to-day fluctuations in prefirst-cigarette affect are associated with the subjective effects from the 1st cigarette of the day or whether these associations differ by smokers' average prefirst-cigarette af...
Theoretically, anxiety sensitivity—fear of anxiety symptoms—enhances perception of and emotional reactivity to autonomic arousal and mental distress, thereby increasing negative affect and motivation to use substances for negative reinforcement. Because no prior study of adolescents has tested if anxiety sensitivity is indirectly associated with su...
Experiencing high negative affect and low positive affect are common to many emotional disorders (e.g., anxiety and depressive), which increases vulnerability to unhealthy drinking patterns. Negative and positive urgency (i.e., the tendency to act impulsively during negative and positive affect, respectively) have also been associated with excessiv...
Background: A relatively large body of evidence indicates that coping motives for cigarette smoking are associated with a number of problematic outcomes (e.g., greater smoking frequency) among adolescents. Evidence also indicates that lower distress tolerance (or higher distress intolerance) is related to higher levels of coping motives for cigaret...
Anxiety sensitivity (AS)- fear of anxiety symptoms and their potential negative consequences-has been implicated in the development of substance use problems and motivation to use substances for coping with distress, though the AS components (physical, cognitive, and social concerns) have not been studied extensively in relation to alcohol- and can...
Purpose: Negative urgency (the tendency to act rashly when distressed) and positive urgency (the tendency to act rashly when euphoric) have been identified as facets of impulsivity that are related to problematic alcohol consumption. Recent evidence suggests that personality traits - such as impulsivity - may be subject to influence by external/env...
Maladaptive emotional traits (anxiety sensitivity [AS], fear of anxiety-related sensations and consequences) and symptoms (major depressive disorder [MDD] and generalized anxiety disorder [GAD] symptoms) could play a role in altering sensitivity to the subjective effects of drugs of abuse in adolescents. Data were drawn from a longitudinal study of...
Introduction: Anhedonia-diminished interest or pleasure in response to rewards-is a dimension implicated in several psychiatric disorders linked to smoking. This laboratory study sought to identify motivational mechanisms linking anhedonia and tobacco addiction by testing the hypothesis that anhedonia, abstinence, and their interaction would predic...
Objective: Nonexperimental survey and field research support the notion that alcohol use may be associated with deliberate self-harm (DSH) across the spectrum of lethality, from nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) through suicide. Nonexperimental studies, however, provide limited information about potential causal relationships between alcohol consumpti...
Background: Numerous anxiety syndromes co-occur with substance use problems in adolescents, though the mechanisms underlying these comorbidities are not well understood. Three transdiagnostic processes-anxiety sensitivity (fear of anxiety-related sensations), distress tolerance (capacity to withstand emotional distress), and negative urgency (prope...
Internet addiction (including online gaming) has been associated with depression. However, most prior research relating internet addiction symptomatology to depressive symptoms has been cross-sectional, conducted with children and adolescents, and only examined depressive symptoms as a broad construct. The purpose of the current study was to examin...
Objective: Negative urgency-the tendency to act rashly during negative affective states-is a risk factor for regular cigarette smoking. This human laboratory study tested a novel theoretical model of the underlying mechanisms linking negative urgency and smoking motivation, which purports that smokers with high negative urgency are at increased sus...
Aims: Anxiety sensitivity (AS)—fearfulness of anxiety symptoms and their consequences—has been tied to indicators of smoking motivation and maintenance. Most prior experimental work has associated AS with negative reinforcement processes (e.g., withdrawal symptoms and negative affect), though a few experimental studies have related AS to positive r...
Anxiety sensitivity (AS)—fear of anxiety-related experiences—has been implicated in smoking motivation and maintenance. In a cross-sectional design, we examined AS facets (physical, cognitive, and social concerns) in relation to tobacco use, abstinence-related problems, and cognitions in 473 treatment-seeking smokers. After controlling for sex, rac...
Objective:
Identifying factors that moderate subjective response to stimulants is important for understanding individuals at risk for abusing these drugs. Some research suggests that Asians may respond differently to stimulants than other races, but controlled human laboratory research of stimulant administration effects in Asians is scant.
Metho...
The social self-control scale (SSCS), which taps provocative behavior in social situations, was compared with five potentially overlapping measures (i.e., temperament-related impulsivity, psychomotor agitation-related self-control, perceived social competence, and rash action in response to negative and positive affectively charged states) as corre...
This chapter focuses on what is known about the acute effects of ±3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) based on findings from human behavioral pharmacology studies. There is a relatively large database from preclinical studies that suggests that MDMA may have long-term adverse effects including neurotoxicity and mood and cognitive disruptions....
Research designs for parsing the mechanisms underlying tobacco withdrawal are scant. This study introduced a novel research design that simultaneously manipulated three tobacco withdrawal mechanisms: pharmacological (nicotine dissipation), sensorimotor (elimination of the smoking ritual), and expectancy (activation of beliefs regarding the effects...
Trait novelty seeking has been consistently implicated in substance use, yet the origins and mechanisms of novelty seeking in substance use proneness are unclear. We aimed to characterize novelty seeking as a phenotypic marker of substance use proneness in adolescence, a critical period for drug use experimentation. To this end, we parsed novelty s...
Disordered gambling and alcohol dependence are influenced by unique and shared genetic factors. Although the evidence is mixed, some research has linked catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) rs4680 (or COMT Val158Met) to the development of gambling or drinking problems; however, no molecular genetic study has jointly examined gambling and drinking pr...
Aims: Anxiety sensitivity—fear of anxiety symptoms and their consequences—has been tied to substance use mostly in adults. Theoretically, anxiety sensitivity heightens negative affect, thereby increasing motivation to use substances for negative reinforcement, which is a risk pathway that may begin in adolescence. To the best of our knowledge, howe...
Aims: Prior studies suggest that sex differences in d-amphetamine response are related to hormonal fluctuations that occur during the luteal phase. Thus, studies control for sex differences by running females during the follicular phase when hormones are relatively low. However, studies showing no sex differences under these conditions have relativ...
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) often precedes comorbid substance use disorder and has been associated with aggression. Prior research has evidenced that alcohol use and other externalizing behaviors share genetic factors with PTSD; however, few studies have examined if specific genes are associated with externalizing behaviors in PTSD. The pu...
Background: Multiple forms of anxiety psychopathology are associated with alcohol use problems in adolescents. Yet, the mechanisms underlying this association are unclear. Anxiety sensitivity (AS) and distress tolerance (DT) represent 2 distinct, conceptually relevant transdiagnostic constructs implicated in multiple manifestations of anxiety that...
Introduction:
Anxiety sensitivity (AS)-the tendency to fear anxiety-related experiences-is a risk factor for anxiety disorders and may contribute to smoking motivation and maintenance. Few studies have examined the relations between conceptually distinct components of AS and smoking behavior. The purpose of the current study was to examine the ass...
Background:
Anxiety sensitivity, a transdiagnostic cognitive vulnerability factor described as an amplifier of negative emotional states, is implicated in the maintenance of cigarette smoking and cessation difficulties. The current study aimed to examine the role of anxiety sensitivity in predicting abstinence-induced changes in nicotine withdrawa...
Objective: Smoking reinforcement expectancies-expectations that smoking modulates mood-can be powerful motivators to smoke, resulting in increased nicotine dependence. The impact of smoking reinforcement expectancies on nicotine dependence may be particularly strong in individuals with increased mood or anxiety symptoms because they may be more lik...
Psychopathy has long been associated with aggressive behavior; however, the neurochemical underpinnings of this relationship are poorly understood. Serotonin (5-HT) neurotransmitter system abnormalities have been associated with provoked aggression in general. In addition, 5-HT dysregulation has been linked to empathy, a trait that is lacking in in...
Objectives: Anxiety sensitivity--fear of anxiety symptoms--may increase motivation to smoke by influencing the development of cognitive expectations regarding smoking's negative reinforcing effects; yet, the nature and mechanisms of this pathway are unclear. We hypothesized that relations between anxiety sensitivity and negative reinforcement-relat...
Urgency (i.e. the tendency to act rashly during negative/positive affect) may increase vulnerability to a variety of risky behaviors. This cross-sectional study of non-treatment-seeking smokers examined the relationship between urgency, level of nicotine dependence, and smoking reinforcement expectancies. Both positive and negative urgency were ass...
The inability to derive pleasure from social relationships, or social anhedonia, is associated with both psychopathology and impaired social functioning. Much of the research on social anhedonia (SA) has focused on its role in psychosis proneness (or schizotypy), which is the predisposition toward psychosis. Recent research suggests that SA may be...
Reports an error in "Effects of alcohol on tests of executive functioning in men and women: A dose response examination" by Casey R. Guillot, Jennifer R. Fanning, Joshua S. Bullock, Michael S. McCloskey and Mitchell E. Berman ( Experimental and Clinical Psychopharmacology , 2010[Oct], Vol 18[5], 409-417). This article contained errors in the text....
Alcohol has been shown to affect performance on tasks associated with executive functioning. However, studies in this area have generally been limited to a single dose or gender or have used small sample sizes. The purpose of this study was to provide a more nuanced and systematic examination of alcohol's effects on commonly used tests of executive...
The illicit drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA; Ecstasy) has been shown to cause long-term serotonin (5-HT) deficits in rodents and non-human primates, and based on the results of brain imaging studies in frequent Ecstasy users, it appears that MDMA has the potential to affect the human brain in much the same way. Because the 5-HT system...
The drug 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA; Ecstasy) long has been considered a neurotoxin selective for serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine; 5-HT) axons in rats and nonhuman primates. MDMA is also thought to have the potential to cause persistent serotonergic alterations in humans. Since the serotonin system is involved in the regulation of anxie...
Due to potential serotonergic deficits, 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or Ecstasy) may cause long-term mood disruptions in recreational Ecstasy users. The purpose of this review is to evaluate the evidence for a relationship between recreational Ecstasy use and higher levels of depressive symptoms. Eleven out of 22 studies initially have r...
Research in laboratory animals has shown that 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA or ecstasy) destroys serotonergic axons in the brain at certain doses. Serotonin is known to take part in the regulation of mood in humans. Many researchers have hypothesized that if recreational ecstasy use destroys serotonergic axons, then a corresponding declin...
Clinical studies of MDMA have been hindered by the fear of harming participants through MDMA-induced neurotoxicity. However, experimental animal studies and brain imaging studies of recreational Ecstasy users have not evidenced that a therapeutic dose of MDMA would be sufficient to cause long-term serotonergic deficits. Furthermore, the issue of po...
