Article

Impact of positive and anxious mood on implicit alcohol-related cognitions in internally motivated undergraduate drinkers

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  • Birch Psychology
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Abstract

We explored the impact of musically induced positive and anxious mood on the implicit alcohol-related cognitions of 48 undergraduate students who drink either to enhance positive mood states (EM) or to cope with anxiety (CM-anxiety). Participants completed a post-mood induction computerized alcohol Stroop task that taps implicit alcohol-related cognitions. As hypothesized, CM-anxiety participants in the anxious (but not those in the positive) mood condition showed longer colour-naming latencies for alcohol (vs. non-alcohol) targets (i.e., an attentional bias toward alcohol-related stimuli). Also conforming to expectation was the finding that EM participants in the positive (but not those in the anxious) mood condition displayed longer colour-naming latencies for (i.e., an attentional bias toward) alcohol (vs. non-alcohol) target words.

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... Self-reported drinking to cope has been consistently associated with sensitivity to moodinduced alcohol-seeking in young adult drinkers (Austin & Smith, 2008;Birch et al., 2004;Field & Powell, 2007;Field & Quigley, 2009;Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007;Rousseau, et al., 2011;Woud, Becker, Rinck, & Salemink, 2015;Zack, Poulos, Fragopoulos, & MacLeod, 2003). In the present study, therefore, we expect that drinking to cope will be associated with greater sensitivity to mood-induced alcohol-seeking. ...
... In the present study, therefore, we expect that drinking to cope will be associated with greater sensitivity to mood-induced alcohol-seeking. The additional question, however, is whether this association is sufficiently specific to coping motives that it can survive when other drinking motives (enhancement, conformity, social pressure and cued craving) are statistically controlled, as has been reported in two preliminary studies (Grant, et al., 2007;Woud, et al., 2015). This finding would indicate that the relationship between self-reported drinking to cope and sensitivity to negative mood-induced alcohol-seeking is not mediated by other drinking motives. ...
... Existing studies are inconsistent as to whether severity of alcohol use disorder symptoms is associated with mood-induced alcohol-seeking. Although four studies have reported such an association (Randall & Cox, 2001;Sinha et al., 2009;Zack, et al., 2003;Zack, et al., 2006), seven studies have reported nonsignificant correlations (Austin & Smith, 2008;Cooney, et al., 1997;Field & Powell, 2007;Field & Quigley, 2009;Hardy & Hogarth, in press;Woud, et al., 2015;Zack, Toneatto, & MacLeod, 1999) and six other studies have not reported this correlation despite having the relevant data (Birch, et al., 2004;Grant, et al., 2007;McGrath, Jones, & Field, 2016;Owens, et al., 2015;Potthast, Neuner, & Catani, 2015;Rousseau, et al., 2011). Negative reinforcement theory predicts that alcohol dependence symptoms should be associated with mood-induced alcohol-seeking, if this is the underpinning mechanism. ...
Article
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Acute negative mood powerfully motivates alcohol-seeking behavior, but it remains unclear whether sensitivity to this effect is greater in drinkers who report depression symptoms, drinking to cope, and subjective reactivity. To examine these questions, 128 young adult alcohol drinkers (ages 18–25) completed questionnaires of alcohol use disorder symptoms, depression symptoms, and drinking to cope with negative affect. Baseline alcohol choice was measured by preference to enlarge alcohol versus food thumbnail images in two-alternative forced-choice trials. Negative mood was then induced by depressive statements and music, before alcohol choice was tested. Subjective reactivity was indexed by increased sadness pre- to post-mood induction. Baseline alcohol choice correlated with alcohol dependence symptoms (p = .001), and drinking coping motives (ps ≤ .01). Mood induction increased alcohol choice and subjective sadness overall (ps < .001). The mood-induced increase in alcohol choice was associated with depression symptoms (p = .007), drinking to cope (ps ≤ .03), and subjective reactivity (p = .007). The relationship between mood-induced alcohol choice and drinking to cope remained significant after covarying for other drinking motives. Furthermore, the three predictors (depression, drinking to cope, and subjective reactivity) accounted for unique variance in mood-induced alcohol choice (ps ≥ .03), and collectively accounted for 18% of the variance (p < .001). These findings validate the pictorial alcohol choice task as sensitive to the relative value of alcohol and acute negative mood. The findings also accord with the core prediction of negative reinforcement theory that sensitivity to the motivational impact of negative mood on alcohol-seeking behavior may be an important mechanism that links depression and alcohol dependence.
... A key source of evidence supporting this particular incentive learning model is the finding that individuals who report drinking to cope with adverse affective states are more sensitive to the motivational impact of experimentally induced negative mood or stress on alcohol-seeking behaviour, as indexed by craving, consumption, preferential choice, or cognitive bias (Austin and Smith 2008;Birch et al. 2004;Brady et al. 2006;Cooney et al. 1997;Field and Powell 2007;Field and Quigley 2009;Grant et al. 2007;Rousseau et al. 2011;Woud et al. 2015;Zack et al. 2003); but for null results, see (Field and Powell 2007;Thomas et al. 2014). The strong interpretation of these findings is that coping motives play a causal role in enabling mood induction to promote alcohol-seeking, rather than automatic S-R processes. ...
... The main finding of the current study was that individuals who reported drinking to cope with negative affect were more sensitive to the motivational impact of negative mood statements promoting goal-directed alcohol-versus food-seeking in an outcome-revaluation procedure. This finding advances previous studies which have also found that coping motives predict sensitivity to mood or stress-induced alcohol-seeking, as indexed by craving, consumption, preferential choice, or cognitive bias (Austin and Smith 2008;Birch et al. 2004;Brady et al. 2006;Cooney et al. 1997;Field and Powell 2007;Field and Quigley 2009;Grant et al. 2007;Rousseau et al. 2011;Woud et al. 2015;Zack et al. 2003) and disconfirms two null results (Field and Powell 2007;Thomas et al. 2014). The novel contribution of the current study was to demonstrate that mood-induced alcohol-seeking can be driven by incentive learning rather than S-R habit processes. ...
... In contrast, some studies have found that sensitivity to mood-induced alcohol-seeking increased with alcohol dependence and depression symptoms. Specifically, three studies found that mood-induced alcoholseeking was greater in more dependent drinkers (Sinha et al. 2009;Zack et al. 2003;Zack et al. 2006), but several others have either reported nonsignificant associations (Austin and Smith 2008;Cooney et al. 1997;Field and Powell 2007;Field and Quigley 2009;Woud et al. 2015;Zack et al. 1999) or have not reported the analysis despite having the relevant data (Birch et al. 2004;Grant et al. 2007;McGrath et al. 2016;Owens et al. 2014;Potthast et al. 2015;Rousseau et al. 2011). With respect to depression symptoms, two studies have shown that the correlation between depression symptoms and alcohol craving was numerically greater in a negative mood than a neutral induction condition, providing weak evidence that depression is associated with greater sensitivity to moodinduced alcohol-seeking (Cooney et al. 1997;Owens et al. 2014). ...
Article
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Background: Most variants of negative reinforcement theory predict that acute depressed mood can promote alcohol-seeking behaviour, but the precise mechanisms underpinning this effect remain contested. One possibility is that mood-induced alcohol-seeking is due to the formation of a stimulus-response (S-R) association, enabling depressed mood to elicit alcohol-seeking automatically. A second possibility is that depressed mood undergoes incentive learning, enabling it to enhance the expected value of alcohol and thus promote goal-directed alcohol-seeking. Objectives: These two explanations were distinguished using a human outcome-revaluation procedure. Methods: One hundred and twenty-eight alcohol drinkers completed questionnaires of alcohol use disorder, drinking to cope with negative affect and depression symptoms. Participants then learned that two responses earned alcohol and food points respectively (baseline) in two alternative forced choice trials. At test, participants rated the valence of randomly sampled negative and positive mood statements and, after each statement, chose between the alcohol- and food-seeking responses in extinction. Results: The percentage of alcohol- versus food-seeking responses was increased significantly in trials containing negative statements compared to baseline and positive statement trials, in individuals who reported drinking to cope with negative affect (p = .004), but there was no such interaction with indices of alcohol use disorder (p = .87) or depression symptoms (p = .58). Conclusions: Individuals who drink to cope with negative affect are more sensitive to the motivational impact of acute depressed mood statements priming goal-directed alcohol-seeking. Negative copers' vulnerability to alcohol dependence may be better explained by excessive affective incentive learning than by S-R habit formation.
... This finding is at odds with multiple studies that show that coping motives are associated with greater sensitivity to mood-induced drug-motivated behavior [Refs. (5,7,15,16,27,(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43); but see Refs. (30,40,44)]. ...
... Finally, sensitivity to mood-induced heroin choice was found to correlate with self-reported opiate use to cope with negative affect, but not other opiate use motives (social pressure and cued craving). This finding contradicts the study by Stathopoulou and colleagues (23) which found no association between moodinduced opiate craving and opiate use to cope with negative affect, but corroborates multiple induction studies with other drug classes that have found this same association (5,7,15,16,27,(37)(38)(39)(40)(41)(42)(43). We may therefore accept our association as a true positive. ...
Article
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Acute growth in negative affect is thought to play a major role in triggering relapse in opiate-dependent individuals. Consistent with this view, three lab studies have demonstrated that negative mood induction increases opiate craving in opiate-dependent individuals. The current study sought to confirm these effects with a behavioral measure of heroin seeking, and test whether the effect is associated with self-reported opiate use to cope with negative affect and subjective reactivity to mood induction. Participants were heroin-dependent individuals engaged with treatment services (n = 47) and control participants (n = 25). Heroin users completed a questionnaire assessing reasons for using heroin: negative affect, social pressure, and cued craving. Baseline heroin choice was measured by preference to enlarge heroin versus food thumbnail pictures in two-alternative forced-choice trials. Negative mood was then induced by depressive statements and music before heroin choice was tested again. Subjective reactivity was indexed by negative and positive mood reported at the pre-induction to post-test timepoints. Heroin users chose heroin images more frequently than controls overall ( p = .001) and showed a negative mood-induced increase in heroin choice compared to control participants (interaction p < .05). Mood-induced heroin choice was associated with self-reported heroin use to cope with negative affect ( p < .05), but not social pressure ( p = .39) or cued craving ( p = .52), and with subjective mood reactivity ( p = .007). These data suggest that acute negative mood is a trigger for heroin seeking in heroin-dependent individuals, and this effect is pronounced in those who report using heroin to cope with negative affect, and those who show greater subjective reactivity to negative triggers. Interventions should seek to target negative coping motives to build resilience to affective triggers for relapse.
... It has been shown that cognitive biases are positively correlated with craving and future drug use (Cousijn et al., 2011;Field and Eastwood, 2005;Houben and Wiers, 2008; but see Christiansen et al., 2015 for a critical review). Furthermore, since negative emotions may cause alcohol craving and consumption in patients with AD (Baker et al., 2004) due to the tension-reducing effect of alcohol, it is suggested that negative emotions can strengthen alcohol-related cognitive biases (Field and Powell, 2007;Field and Quigley, 2009;Grant et al., 2007;Lindgren et al., 2009;Salemink et al., 2015;Stewart et al., 2002). Furthermore, studies have found that re-training maladaptive cognitive biases, when added to regular therapy, can lead to a reduction of alcohol use and relapse rates (see for a review Wiers et al., 2013a). ...
... First, we included a negative mood induction prior to the tasks in order to study the effect of baclofen on negative affect strengthened cognitive biases. The majority of studies found indications for a strengthening of cognitive biases after the induction of negative mood (Field and Powell, 2007;Field and Quigley, 2009;Grant et al., 2007;Lindgren et al., 2009;Ostafin and Brooks, 2010;Salemink et al., 2015;Stewart et al., 2002); however, this was the first study examining the effect of negative mood on cognitive biases in AD patients. Although subjective pre-and post-measures indicate that negative mood increased, the precise effect of the negative mood induction on cognitive biases in the present study is not clear, since no control condition with a neutral or positive mood induction was included (this was done to optimize the power for finding an effect of baclofen on these biases), and cognitive biases were only measured after the induction of negative mood. ...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Baclofen has shown promise in the treatment of alcohol dependence. However, its precise (neuro-) psychological working mechanism is still under debate. Aims: This study aimed to get a better understanding of baclofen's working mechanism by examining the effect of baclofen on cognitive biases. It was hypothesized that baclofen, compared to placebo, would lead to weaker cognitive biases. Furthermore, given a suggested anxiolytic effect of baclofen, we expected that anxiety would moderate this effect. Methods: From a larger randomized clinical trial (RCT) with 151 participants, a subset of 143 detoxified alcohol-dependent patients, either taking baclofen or placebo, was examined. Attentional bias for alcohol (500 and 1500 ms), alcohol approach tendencies, implicit alcohol-relaxation associations and trait anxiety were assessed before the administration of baclofen or placebo. Four weeks later, 94 patients were still abstinent (53 in the baclofen and 41 in the placebo condition) and cognitive biases were assessed again. Results: At baseline, patients showed a vigilance-avoidance pattern for the attentional bias (at 500 and 1500 ms, respectively) and alcohol-negative associations. After 4 weeks, an indication for an attentional bias away from alcohol at 500 ms was found only in the baclofen group; however, cognitive biases did not differ significantly between treatment groups. No moderating role of anxiety on cognitive biases was found. Conclusions: Baclofen did not lead to a differential change in cognitive biases compared with placebo, and trait anxiety levels did not moderate this. A better understanding of the working mechanism of baclofen and predictors of treatment success would allow prescribing of baclofen in a more targeted manner.
... The first group found that: a) negative affective cues eased the activation of IAC in coping motives and problem drinkers and this activation predicted alcohol consumption (Campos-Melady & Smith, 2012;Zack, Toneatto & MacLeod, 1999); b) high doses of benzodiazepines reduced that activation while low doses eased it (Zack, Poulos & Woodford, 2006); c) there was a strong relationship between depressive symptoms and positive implicit alcohol associations in coping motives drinkers (Ralston & Palfai, 2012); and d) coping motives drinkers present higher alcohol attentional bias than no coping motives drinkers (Forestell, Dickter &Young, 2012). The second group of articles found that: a) an induction of a negative emotional state predicted IAC in high risk drinkers (Kelly & Masterman, 2008), in CM drinkers (Ostafin & Brooks, 2011), in individuals with high tendency to act impulsively during negative emotional states (Treloar & McCarthy, 2012) and in individuals with weak implicit expectancies that alcohol generates negative emotions (Kelly, Masterman & Young, 2011); b) an induction of an anxiety emotional state predicted IAC in coping-anxiety motive drinkers; and c) an induction of a positive emotional state predicted IAC in low risk drinkers (Kelly & Masterman, 2008) and enhancement motive drinkers (Birch, Stewart, Wiers, Klein, MacLean & Berish, 2008;Grant, Stewart & Birch, 2007). ...
... Thirdly, the reviewed articles revealed that certain emotional states ease IAC activation, with individual differences (such as the presence or absence of psychological distress, the tendency to impulsively respond to certain emotions, internal reasons leading to alcohol consumption and the individuals' expectancies on the effects of alcohol use) moderating the relationship between the emotional state and IAC. The evaluation of internal motivation for alcohol consumption as a mediating variable between emotional state and IAC revealed that IAC activation in enhancement motive drinkers is stronger when they experiment positive emotional states, though such activation in coping motive drinkers is stronger when they suffer negative emotional states (Grant et al., 2007). Furthermore, one article found that the emotional state moderated the relationship between the implicit alcohol-related expectancies and consumption. ...
Article
Full-text available
According to the dual process model, the interaction between explicit (controlled) and implicit (automatic) cognitions would allow the understanding of irrational actions like addictive behaviors. This model has gained great popularity among addiction researchers, leading to an exponential growth in publications on implicit alcohol related cognition (IAC). Hence, the goal of this article is to identify trends in the study of IAC by means of a bibliometric and content analysis of the empirical studies published up to May, 2013. Throughout this paper, the studied topics of IAC were characterized, the most prolific countries, authors and journals were recognized, the most cited publications were detected and the most employed methods were identified.
... The first group found that: a) negative affective cues eased the activation of IAC in coping motives and problem drinkers and this activation predicted alcohol consumption (Campos-Melady & Smith, 2012;Zack, Toneatto & MacLeod, 1999); b) high doses of benzodiazepines reduced that activation while low doses eased it (Zack, Poulos & Woodford, 2006); c) there was a strong relationship between depressive symptoms and positive implicit alcohol associations in coping motives drinkers (Ralston & Palfai, 2012); and d) coping motives drinkers present higher alcohol attentional bias than no coping motives drinkers (Forestell, Dickter &Young, 2012). The second group of articles found that: a) an induction of a negative emotional state predicted IAC in high risk drinkers (Kelly & Masterman, 2008), in CM drinkers (Ostafin & Brooks, 2011), in individuals with high tendency to act impulsively during negative emotional states (Treloar & McCarthy, 2012) and in individuals with weak implicit expectancies that alcohol generates negative emotions (Kelly, Masterman & Young, 2011); b) an induction of an anxiety emotional state predicted IAC in coping-anxiety motive drinkers; and c) an induction of a positive emotional state predicted IAC in low risk drinkers (Kelly & Masterman, 2008) and enhancement motive drinkers (Birch, Stewart, Wiers, Klein, MacLean & Berish, 2008;Grant, Stewart & Birch, 2007). ...
... Thirdly, the reviewed articles revealed that certain emotional states ease IAC activation, with individual differences (such as the presence or absence of psychological distress, the tendency to impulsively respond to certain emotions, internal reasons leading to alcohol consumption and the individuals' expectancies on the effects of alcohol use) moderating the relationship between the emotional state and IAC. The evaluation of internal motivation for alcohol consumption as a mediating variable between emotional state and IAC revealed that IAC activation in enhancement motive drinkers is stronger when they experiment positive emotional states, though such activation in coping motive drinkers is stronger when they suffer negative emotional states (Grant et al., 2007). Furthermore, one article found that the emotional state moderated the relationship between the implicit alcohol-related expectancies and consumption. ...
Article
Full-text available
According to the dual process model, the interaction between explicit (controlled) and implicit (automatic) cognitions would allow the understanding of irrational actions like addictive behaviors. This model has gained great popularity among addiction researchers, leading to an exponential growth in publications on implicit alcohol related cognition (IAC). Hence, the goal of this article is to identify trends in the study of IAC by means of a bibliometric and content analysis of the empirical studies published up to May, 2013. Throughout this paper, the studied topics of IAC were characterized, the most prolific countries, authors and journals were recognized, the most cited publications were detected and the most employed methods were identified.
... Individuals with high levels of internalizing traits report using substances to regulate their negative emotions. Consistent with the self-medication model, individuals with high levels of hopelessness have been shown to cope with depression by drinking , which can then lead to severe alcohol use problems (Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). Internalizing personality traits can also intensify the association between internalizing symptoms and alcohol use. ...
... As shown in Figure 12 (Hasking, Lyvers, & Carlopio, 2011), these positive expectancies can then influence risky drinking and drug use motives, which are the most immediate predictors of early onset substance use in adolescence. In particular, the desire to cope with depressed mood strongly influences drinking in depressionprone young people and these specific motives are linked with both heavy use and substance-related problems (Grant et al., 2007). Family relationship quality can modulate these processes by altering the choice of peer groups, indirectly protecting against or aggravating the negative effects of depression. ...
Book
Full-text available
Chapter 1: Understanding the Risk Factors for Substance Abuse There are multiple developmental pathways to substance use disorders, with the risk factors that can start an individual down one of these pathways ranging from the genetic to the sociocultural. Because these factors tend to cluster and can vary with age, disentangling their unique contributions can be difficult. Consequently, a focus on the stages of development is key. This chapter looks at the latest research on the different risk factors at play during a person’s development, including: • Genetic factors (i.e., the fact that the risk for substance runs in families), which are estimated to contribute 40–60 percent of vulnerability to drug abuse; • Early brain development, looking particularly at how disruptions in the development of the brain’s fear processing and reward cue processing circuitry can predict later behaviour, including substance abuse; and • The role of the environment in shaping brain functioning, including maltreatment and severe early stress; parental factors such as prenatal exposure to drugs, anti-social behaviour, a non-intact family and maternal depression; the influence of peers, especially among youth with low self-efficacy; and the cultural and social structures that inadvertently channel people toward drug use. The chapter concludes with a brief look at how these factors contribute to the two major developmental pathways (characterized by external problems such as aggression or internal problems such as anxiety), both of which represent an increased risk for substance use disorders. For example, “externalizers” seem to be more responsive to drug activation of the brain’s reward cue system, while “internalizers” appear to use drugs in an attempt to control their hyper-responsive fear-anxiety system. Chapter 2: The Externalizing Developmental Pathway to Substance Use Disorders Almost all young children are impulsive, inattentive and emotionally reactive, and many are aggressive and highly active. In most cases, these behaviours subside as a child matures. In about 25 percent of children, though, these behaviours are unusually elevated and persistent, expressing themselves as an enduring mixture of features that include social gregariousness, risky thrill-seeking, emotionality and irritability. These externalizing behaviours are predictive of various childand adolescent-onset disruptive behavioural disorders (DBDs), including oppositional defiant disorder in the preschool years, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in the elementary school years, and conduct disorder in middle childhood through adolescence. By adolescence, these DBDs increase the risk for substance use disorders: compared to those without DBDs, individuals with DBDs have double the risk of abusing tobacco, triple the risk of abusing alcohol, and five times the risk of abusing illicit drugs. Indeed, 75 percent of adolescents with a DBD become substance abusers in adulthood and 50 percent of adults with substance use disorders had a history of at least one DBD in childhood or adolescence. This chapter summarizes the various risk factors that predict the development of DBDs and substance use problems including genetic predispositions, chronic early maltreatment, parental antisocial behaviour and substance abuse, poor inhibitory control, and an early age of onset of drug and alcohol use. Chapter 3: The Internalizing Developmental Pathway to Substance Use Disorders Youth and adults who abuse substances commonly experience co-occurring mental health problems, with mood and anxiety disorders among the most prevalent. Because internalizing personality traits are relatively stable over time and can be detected early in life, behavioural inhibition (i.e., a temperamental factor involving withdrawal, avoidance, over-arousal and fear of the unfamiliar) in infancy can be used to predict internalizingproblems into adulthood. While the rates of depressive disorders in males and females is relatively equal in childhood, this changes dramatically when youth reach adolescence, with females becoming three times more likely to develop mood disorders. Gender differences in anxiety are present from childhood, with females twice as likely as males to experience clinically relevant anxiety in their lifetimes. In most cases, mood and anxiety problems precede the onset of substance abuse, suggesting individuals self-medicate with alcohol or drugs to temporarily diminish their anxiety. As a corollary, this observation also implies that the shared risk for internalizing behaviours and substance use problems reflects an overlap of pre-existing vulnerabilities. This chapter presents evidence indicating there is indeed an overlap in genetic factors, neurobiological differences that influence personality, responses to drugs and alcohol, and early life experiences such as abuse and neglect. Once substance use begins, it can lead to worsened mood and more anxiety, further perpetuating the relationship between internalizing problems and substance use. Obtaining a better understanding of the factors that increase risk for substance use in people with anxiety/depression and influence their progress along this pathway is expected to improve our understanding of how addictions develop. Chapter 4: A developmental approach to prevention and intervention The multiple risk factors influencing internalizing and externalizing behaviours are partly a function of the developmental stage of the individual. Each stage presents unique challenges that might increase vulnerability to substance abuse, as well as distinct opportunities for promoting resilience and detecting at-risk individuals. This chapter outlines the need to consider prevention within this developmental context, summarizing the key risk factors as well as several well-validated preventive interventions for each of the early childhood, school-age and adolescent stages. Such a framework not only highlights specific developmental pathways and milestones, it also underscores the need to implement personalized prevention strategies in a multidisciplinary manner, working across different social contexts and in developmentally appropriate ways. For example: • Exposure to parental substance abuse and psychopathology during early childhood increases the likelihood of poor outcomes later in life. Helping parents improve their ability to care for infants and toddlers can help counteract exposure to these risk factors by improving child–parent attachment and reducing behavioural and emotional dysregulation. • In school-age children, genetic predispositions, suboptimal parenting and exposure to uncontrollable stressful life events all affect the emergence of internalizing and externalizing behaviours. Multilevel preventive interventions implemented at the individual, family and school levels have proven to be most effective in targeting specific risk patterns while increasing social adaptation and self-efficacy. • Prevention programs targeted at adolescents are often ineffective, partly because of researchers’ inability to distinguish normal features of adolescence (e.g., novelty-seeking, reduced risk aversion, heightened reward salience) from causal mechanisms predicting substance abuse. For instance, internalizing and externalizing symptoms might be associated with specific motivations to use substances that, in turn, could be targeted through personalized interventions to prevent future substance abuse. Reflecting the increased importance of teens’ broader social environments, community-based interventions should be implemented alongside individual- and school-based initiatives. Chapter 5: A Call to Action On the basis of the research findings presented in the previous chapters, this final section makes a series of recommendations for prevention research and interventions, and highlights future directions and developments in the field of substance abuse prevention. Given the inter-relationships between the risk factors for substance abuse and their potentially broad impact on a wide range of negative outcomes, this chapter reinforces the need to take a multidimensional, interdisciplinary approach to futureprevention research and interventions. It also looks at the need to develop a methodology for classifying the early warning signs of risk to help teachers and other childcare professionals identify at-risk youth as soon as possible, as well as the need to codify specific neurobiological and behavioural markers of substance abuse risk so that they can be better matched to specific interventions. Doing so would help streamline early detection efforts and improve the development and implementation of personalized prevention programs.
... Individuals with high levels of internalizing traits report using substances to regulate their negative emotions. Consistent with the self-medication model, individuals with high levels of hopelessness have been shown to cope with depression by drinking , which can then lead to severe alcohol use problems (Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). Internalizing personality traits can also intensify the association between internalizing symptoms and alcohol use. ...
... As shown in Figure 12 (Hasking, Lyvers, & Carlopio, 2011), these positive expectancies can then influence risky drinking and drug use motives, which are the most immediate predictors of early onset substance use in adolescence. In particular, the desire to cope with depressed mood strongly influences drinking in depressionprone young people and these specific motives are linked with both heavy use and substance-related problems (Grant et al., 2007). Family relationship quality can modulate these processes by altering the choice of peer groups, indirectly protecting against or aggravating the negative effects of depression. ...
Chapter
Full-text available
Chapter 1: Understanding the Risk Factors for Substance Abuse There are multiple developmental pathways to substance use disorders, with the risk factors that can start an individual down one of these pathways ranging from the genetic to the sociocultural. Because these factors tend to cluster and can vary with age, disentangling their unique contributions can be difficult. Consequently, a focus on the stages of development is key. This chapter looks at the latest research on the different risk factors at play during a person’s development, including: • Genetic factors (i.e., the fact that the risk for substance runs in families), which are estimated to contribute 40–60 percent of vulnerability to drug abuse; • Early brain development, looking particularly at how disruptions in the development of the brain’s fear processing and reward cue processing circuitry can predict later behaviour, including substance abuse; and • The role of the environment in shaping brain functioning, including maltreatment and severe early stress; parental factors such as prenatal exposure to drugs, anti-social behaviour, a non-intact family and maternal depression; the influence of peers, especially among youth with low self-efficacy; and the cultural and social structures that inadvertently channel people toward drug use. The chapter concludes with a brief look at how these factors contribute to the two major developmental pathways (characterized by external problems such as aggression or internal problems such as anxiety), both of which represent an increased risk for substance use disorders. For example, “externalizers” seem to be more responsive to drug activation of the brain’s reward cue system, while “internalizers” appear to use drugs in an attempt to control their hyper-responsive fear-anxiety system. Chapter 2: The Externalizing Developmental Pathway to Substance Use Disorders Almost all young children are impulsive, inattentive and emotionally reactive, and many are aggressive and highly active. In most cases, these behaviours subside as a child matures. In about 25 percent of children, though, these behaviours are unusually elevated and persistent, expressing themselves as an enduring mixture of features that include social gregariousness, risky thrill-seeking, emotionality and irritability. These externalizing behaviours are predictive of various childand adolescent-onset disruptive behavioural disorders (DBDs), including oppositional defiant disorder in the preschool years, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder in the elementary school years, and conduct disorder in middle childhood through adolescence. By adolescence, these DBDs increase the risk for substance use disorders: compared to those without DBDs, individuals with DBDs have double the risk of abusing tobacco, triple the risk of abusing alcohol, and five times the risk of abusing illicit drugs. Indeed, 75 percent of adolescents with a DBD become substance abusers in adulthood and 50 percent of adults with substance use disorders had a history of at least one DBD in childhood or adolescence. This chapter summarizes the various risk factors that predict the development of DBDs and substance use problems including genetic predispositions, chronic early maltreatment, parental antisocial behaviour and substance abuse, poor inhibitory control, and an early age of onset of drug and alcohol use. Chapter 3: The Internalizing Developmental Pathway to Substance Use Disorders Youth and adults who abuse substances commonly experience co-occurring mental health problems, with mood and anxiety disorders among the most prevalent. Because internalizing personality traits are relatively stable over time and can be detected early in life, behavioural inhibition (i.e., a temperamental factor involving withdrawal, avoidance, over-arousal and fear of the unfamiliar) in infancy can be used to predict internalizingproblems into adulthood. While the rates of depressive disorders in males and females is relatively equal in childhood, this changes dramatically when youth reach adolescence, with females becoming three times more likely to develop mood disorders. Gender differences in anxiety are present from childhood, with females twice as likely as males to experience clinically relevant anxiety in their lifetimes. In most cases, mood and anxiety problems precede the onset of substance abuse, suggesting individuals self-medicate with alcohol or drugs to temporarily diminish their anxiety. As a corollary, this observation also implies that the shared risk for internalizing behaviours and substance use problems reflects an overlap of pre-existing vulnerabilities. This chapter presents evidence indicating there is indeed an overlap in genetic factors, neurobiological differences that influence personality, responses to drugs and alcohol, and early life experiences such as abuse and neglect. Once substance use begins, it can lead to worsened mood and more anxiety, further perpetuating the relationship between internalizing problems and substance use. Obtaining a better understanding of the factors that increase risk for substance use in people with anxiety/depression and influence their progress along this pathway is expected to improve our understanding of how addictions develop. Chapter 4: A developmental approach to prevention and intervention The multiple risk factors influencing internalizing and externalizing behaviours are partly a function of the developmental stage of the individual. Each stage presents unique challenges that might increase vulnerability to substance abuse, as well as distinct opportunities for promoting resilience and detecting at-risk individuals. This chapter outlines the need to consider prevention within this developmental context, summarizing the key risk factors as well as several well-validated preventive interventions for each of the early childhood, school-age and adolescent stages. Such a framework not only highlights specific developmental pathways and milestones, it also underscores the need to implement personalized prevention strategies in a multidisciplinary manner, working across different social contexts and in developmentally appropriate ways. For example: • Exposure to parental substance abuse and psychopathology during early childhood increases the likelihood of poor outcomes later in life. Helping parents improve their ability to care for infants and toddlers can help counteract exposure to these risk factors by improving child–parent attachment and reducing behavioural and emotional dysregulation. • In school-age children, genetic predispositions, suboptimal parenting and exposure to uncontrollable stressful life events all affect the emergence of internalizing and externalizing behaviours. Multilevel preventive interventions implemented at the individual, family and school levels have proven to be most effective in targeting specific risk patterns while increasing social adaptation and self-efficacy. • Prevention programs targeted at adolescents are often ineffective, partly because of researchers’ inability to distinguish normal features of adolescence (e.g., novelty-seeking, reduced risk aversion, heightened reward salience) from causal mechanisms predicting substance abuse. For instance, internalizing and externalizing symptoms might be associated with specific motivations to use substances that, in turn, could be targeted through personalized interventions to prevent future substance abuse. Reflecting the increased importance of teens’ broader social environments, community-based interventions should be implemented alongside individual- and school-based initiatives. Chapter 5: A Call to Action On the basis of the research findings presented in the previous chapters, this final section makes a series of recommendations for prevention research and interventions, and highlights future directions and developments in the field of substance abuse prevention. Given the inter-relationships between the risk factors for substance abuse and their potentially broad impact on a wide range of negative outcomes, this chapter reinforces the need to take a multidimensional, interdisciplinary approach to futureprevention research and interventions. It also looks at the need to develop a methodology for classifying the early warning signs of risk to help teachers and other childcare professionals identify at-risk youth as soon as possible, as well as the need to codify specific neurobiological and behavioural markers of substance abuse risk so that they can be better matched to specific interventions. Doing so would help streamline early detection efforts and improve the development and implementation of personalized prevention programs.
... Substance use has been shown to relate to numerous personal characteristics, such as neuroticism and anxiety sensitivity (Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007), impulsivity (Le Bon et al., 2004), and sensation seeking (Krank et al., 2011). Furthermore, numerous differences in substance use have been associated with certain demographics (such as gender and race), including time of usage and location for usage (Goncy & Mrug, 2013). ...
... More importantly, in regard to effective learning to improve ESE for substance use and abuse prevention/reduction, is skill development to the degree where an adolescent can begin to trust their ability to reach their goals when faced with emotion-laden interactions with others. In turn, increasing selfefficacy, in particular ESE, appears to be an important component for interventions designed to prevent adolescent engagement in risky emotion-driven behaviors (DiClemente et al., 2008;Hennessy et al., 2013;Hessler & Fainsilber-Katz, 2010;Romer et al., 2009) often associated with the risk factors for adolescent substance use and abuse (Grant et al., 2007;Krank et al., 2011;Le Bon et al., 2004). For example, the Positive Action program (Beets et al., 2009), groups classroom lessons into self-concept, positive actions for the mind and body, social and emotional actions for managing oneself responsibly, getting along with others, being honest with yourself and others, and self-improvement. ...
Article
This study examined relationships between emotional self-efficacy (ESE) and alcohol and tobacco use in a statewide sample of public high school adolescents (n = 2,566). The Center for Disease Control Youth Risk Behavior Survey and an adolescent ESE scale were utilized. Logistic regression analyses indicated the presence of any significant race by gender associations between lower ESE and alcohol and tobacco use. Results suggest that alcohol and cigarette use was significantly associated (p ≤ .05) with lower levels of ESE for certain race/gender groups. Results have implications for school- and community-based mental health services and substance use prevention/education programs for adolescents. Measures of ESE as a component of comprehensive assessments of adolescent mental health in fieldwork, research, and substance abuse prevention/education program evaluation efforts should be considered.
... Individuals with high levels of internalizing traits report using substances to regulate their negative emotions. Consistent with the self-medication model, individuals with high levels of hopelessness have been shown to cope with depression by drinking , which can then lead to severe alcohol use problems (Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). Internalizing personality traits can also intensify the association between internalizing symptoms and alcohol use. ...
... As shown in Figure 12 (Hasking, Lyvers, & Carlopio, 2011), these positive expectancies can then influence risky drinking and drug use motives, which are the most immediate predictors of early onset substance use in adolescence. In particular, the desire to cope with depressed mood strongly influences drinking in depressionprone young people and these specific motives are linked with both heavy use and substance-related problems (Grant et al., 2007). Family relationship quality can modulate these processes by altering the choice of peer groups, indirectly protecting against or aggravating the negative effects of depression. ...
Technical Report
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... Individuals with high levels of internalizing traits report using substances to regulate their negative emotions. Consistent with the self-medication model, individuals with high levels of hopelessness have been shown to cope with depression by drinking , which can then lead to severe alcohol use problems (Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). Internalizing personality traits can also intensify the association between internalizing symptoms and alcohol use. ...
... As shown in Figure 12 (Hasking, Lyvers, & Carlopio, 2011), these positive expectancies can then influence risky drinking and drug use motives, which are the most immediate predictors of early onset substance use in adolescence. In particular, the desire to cope with depressed mood strongly influences drinking in depressionprone young people and these specific motives are linked with both heavy use and substance-related problems (Grant et al., 2007). Family relationship quality can modulate these processes by altering the choice of peer groups, indirectly protecting against or aggravating the negative effects of depression. ...
... Although guided imagery is the most widely used technique in alcohol and addiction research to induce a specific mood, other mood induction approaches include exposure to somber or otherwise emotionally laden music (Birch et al. 2004;Grant et al. 2007;Jansma et al. 2000;Willner et al. 1998) or to sad or disturbing images (Mason et al. 2008). In general, these techniques are effective in inducing the target mood, although amenable to confirmation only with subjective indices. ...
... In general, these techniques are effective in inducing the target mood, although amenable to confirmation only with subjective indices. Only negative mood induction using music has been shown to induce the urge to drink and only in certain subgroups, such as those who report using alcohol as a coping strategy (see Birch et al. 2004;Grant et al. 2007). ...
Article
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Understanding the biologic systems that underlie the relationship between stress and alcohol consumption may lead to better prevention efforts and more effective treatments for alcoholism. Clinical laboratory studies offer a unique opportunity to examine these relationships by using a controlled environment to study how an acute stressor affects alcohol drinking and alcohol craving, how individuals in recovery or those at risk for alcoholism may respond differently to stressors relative to control subjects, and how alcohol differentially affects stress reactivity in these groups. This article reviews some of the most common physical, psychological, and pharmacological stressors used in stress-induction studies designed to reveal details about the relationship between stress reactivity and alcohol use and abuse.
... Alcohol AB, assessed through reaction times, did not differ across mood induction conditions, but the reliability of the visual probe task was very low, which might explain the null findings. Following musically induced positive and anxious mood, Grant et al. (2007) showed that students with coping motives presented increased AB in the anxious condition (compared to positive mood condition), whereas students with enhancement motives showed the opposite findings. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), Emery and Simons (2020) then explored whether positive or negative changes of affective states led to increased AB by assessing mood and alcohol Stroop interferences for 28 consecutive days through smartphone reports. ...
Article
Background: Alcohol-related attentional biases (AB) are thought to play a key role in the emergence and maintenance of excessive alcohol use. Recent models suggest that AB, classically considered as a permanent feature in alcohol use disorders, are rather modulated by temporary motivational states. Aims: We explored the influence of current mood and craving on AB in binge drinking, through a mood induction procedure combined with eye-tracking measures of AB. Methods: In Experiment 1, we measured AB (visual probe task with eye-tracking measures) among binge drinkers (n=48) and light drinkers (n=32) following positive, negative and neutral mood inductions. Participants reported subjective craving and mood before/after induction. In Experiment 2, we measured AB among the same binge drinkers compared with 29 moderate drinkers following alcohol-related negative, non-alcohol-related negative and neutral mood inductions. Results: In Experiment 1, induced negative mood and group positively predicted subjective craving, which was positively associated with AB. We found no effect of induced positive mood nor a direct mood-AB association. In Experiment 2, the relationships AB presented with both induced negative mood and group were again mediated by craving. Inducing alcohol-related negative mood did not modify the mood-craving association. Conclusions: Alcohol-related AB are not a stable binge drinking characteristic but rather vary according to transient motivational (i.e., craving) and emotional (i.e., negative mood) states. This study provides important insights to better understand AB in subclinical populations and emphasizes the importance of considering motivational and affective states as intercorrelated, to offer multiple ways to reduce excessive alcohol use.
... The decodability of reward sensitivity in physiological signals could predict subsequent fast as well as slow mood fluctuations in healthy participants. As dysregulated reward sensitivity has also been linked to addiction [68] and mood is coupled to craving [69][70][71][72][73] similar intense sampling methods that combine EMA-based tasks, computational models, and wearable sensors could potentially be used to predict rapid and sudden shifts toward episodes of uncontrolled substance use. ...
Article
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Introduction: Over the last decades, our understanding of the cognitive, motivational, and neural processes involved in addictive behavior has increased enormously. A plethora of laboratory-based and cross-sectional studies has linked cognitive-behavioral measures to between-subject differences in drinking behavior. However, such laboratory-based studies inevitably suffer from small sample sizes and the inability to link temporal fluctuations in task measures to fluctuations in real-life substance use. To overcome these problems, several existing behavioral tasks have been transferred to smartphones to allow studying cognition in the field. Method: In this narrative review, we first summarize studies that used existing behavioral tasks in the laboratory and self-reports of substance use with ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in the field. Next, we review studies on psychometric properties of smartphone-based behavioral tasks. Finally, we review studies that used both smartphone-based tasks and self-reports with EMA in the field. Results: Overall, studies were scarce and heterogenous both in tasks and in study outcomes. Nevertheless, existing findings are promising and point toward several methodological recommendations: concerning psychometrics, studies show that - although more systematic studies are necessary - task validity and reliability can be improved, for example, by analyzing several measurement sessions at once rather than analyzing sessions separately. Studies that use tasks in the field, moreover, show that power can be improved by choosing sampling schemes that combine time-based with event-based sampling, rather than relying on time-based sampling alone. Increasing sampling frequency can further increase power. However, as this also increases the burden to participants, more research is necessary to determine the ideal sampling frequency for each task. Conclusion: Although more research is necessary to systematically study both the psychometrics of smartphone-based tasks and the frequency at which task measures fluctuate, existing studies are promising and reveal important methodological recommendations useful for researchers interested in implementing behavioral tasks in EMA studies.
... Considering that the romantic couples study involved similar numbers of men and women, and this study was comprised of more women (66.1%), perhaps these differences are attributable to the greater proportion of women in the present study. Given that depression and anxiety may be associated with different alcohol-use patterns (Grant, Stewart, O'Connor, et al., 2007), the mechanisms and contextual factors underlying depression-related drinking may be distinct from those underlying anxiety-related drinking Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007;Grant et al., 2009). Of interest, supplementary analyses suggested that CAM (but not CDM) were positively associated with volume of drinking when both motives were entered as simultaneous mediators. ...
Article
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Drinking to cope with negative affect is a strong predictor of alcohol-related problems. We hypothesized that the association between friendship conflict and alcohol-related problems would be mediated by coping-with-depression motives in emerging adults’ close friendships. We used a 4-wave, 4-month longitudinal self-report survey design measuring friendship conflict, coping motives, and alcohol-related problems from 174 same-sex friendship dyads. Participants were recruited from Nova Scotia, Canada between September 2016 and February 2019. Participants had a mean age of 18.66 ( SD = 1.17) and were 66.1% female. Data were analyzed using multilevel structural equation modeling. Coping-with-depression motives mediated the link between conflict and alcohol-related problems at the between- and within-subject levels. Unexpectedly, coping-with-anxiety motives was an additional mediator at the within-subjects level. Interventions for emerging adults’ problem drinking should consider the influence of friendship conflict and its impact on emerging adults’ tendencies to drink to cope with both depression and anxiety. Materials/Syntax: https://osf.io/krs3v/
... Mood measure. Daily mood ratings were made for depressed ("sad"/"depressed"/"blue") [55] and positive ("cheerful"/"happy"/"glad"/"pleased") [56] items on separate visual analogue scales (VAS) ranging from "not at all" (=0) to "very" (=100). Responses were separately averaged daily to determine daily depressed and positive mood. ...
Article
Background and Aims Reported rates of cannabis use among Canadian females are increasing. Female cannabis users progress to cannabis use disorder more rapidly than males (telescoping) and have higher rates of emotional disorder comorbidity. Addictive behaviors may change, along with mood and motivations, across the menstrual cycle (MC), particularly for females with pre‐menstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). This study aimed to determine whether increases in depressed mood and coping motives would predict increased cannabis use pre‐menstrually/menstrually, particularly among females with PMDD. We also assessed positive mood and enhancement motive ratings to establish specificity of predicted depressed mood and coping motive results. Design Observational study using data collected across 32 days using electronic daily diary methods. Setting Nova Scotia, Canada. Participants Sixty‐nine naturally‐cycling female cannabis users (Mage=29.25, SD=5.66) with and without retrospectively‐identified PMDD (via structured clinical interview) and prospectively‐identified PMDD (via elevated pre‐menstrual depressed mood). Self‐reported MC phase was validated using salivary progesterone concentrations. Measurements Depressed/positive mood, coping‐/enhancement‐motivated cannabis use, and cannabis use quantity. Findings Coping motives explained heightened cannabis use pre‐menstrually/menstrually in those with retrospectively‐identified PMDD. Depressed mood explained increased cannabis use menstrually in those with retrospectively‐/prospectively‐identified PMDD. Moreover, prospectively‐identified PMDD significantly moderated the relationship between depressed mood and cannabis use quantity menstrually. In those with prospectively‐identified PMDD, positive mood and enhancement motives were associated with decreased cannabis use during the follicular/ovulatory phases. Females with versus without retrospectively‐identified PMDD also displayed greater overall cannabis use quantity [M (SD)=3.44(2.84) standard joint equivalents versus 1.85(1.82), respectively; U=277.50, p=.008]. Conclusions Depressed mood may explain heightened cannabis use menstrually in females with pre‐menstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD). Coping motives may explain heightened cannabis use pre‐menstrually/menstrually in females with retrospectively‐identified PMDD.
... withdrawal stage, mood, motivational state or craving) still needs to be experimentally addressed in SAUD. Results in student drinkers actually rather suggest that AB fluctuate alongside motivational state, as subjective craving (Bollen et al., 2020), mood induction procedure (Grant et al., 2007), stress (Field and Quigley, 2009) or alcohol-cue exposure (Ramirez et al., 2015) usually generate changes in AB magnitude. ...
Article
Rationale: Severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD) is a psychiatric condition linked to cerebral and cognitive consequences. SAUD is notably characterized by an over-activation of the reflexive/reward system when confronted with alcohol-related cues. Such over-reactivity generates a preferential allocation of attentional resources towards these cues, labeled as attentional biases (AB). Theoretical assumptions have been made regarding the characteristics of AB and their underlying processes. While often considered as granted, these assumptions remain to be experimentally validated. Aims: We first identify the theoretical assumptions made by previous studies exploring the nature and role of AB. We then discuss the current evidence available to establish their validity. We finally propose research avenues to experimentally test them. Methods: Capitalizing on a narrative review of studies exploring AB in SAUD, the current limits of the behavioral measures used for their evaluation are highlighted, as well as the benefits derived from the use of eye-tracking measures to obtain a deeper understanding of their underlying processes. We describe the issues related to the theoretical proposals on AB and propose research avenues to test them. Four experimental axes are proposed, respectively related to the determination of: (1) the genuine nature of the mechanisms underlying AB; (2) their stability over the disease course; (3) their specificity to alcohol-related stimuli; and (4) their reflexive or controlled nature. Conclusions: This in-depth exploration of the available knowledge related to AB in SAUD, and of its key limitations, highlights the theoretical and clinical interest of our innovative experimental perspectives capitalizing on eye-tracking measures.
... The stress-induced increase in drug craving predicts risk of relapse in alcohol [136][137][138][139] and cocainedependent individuals [140,141], suggesting this sensitivity is a core mechanism in addiction. Mood/stress-induced drug motivation is also amplified in individuals who self-report using drugs to cope with negative affect [10,115,125,136,137,[142][143][144][145][146][147][148][149], in smokers with depression symptoms [7,150], young adult drinkers with depression symptoms [10] and alcohol-dependent men with anxiety symptoms [137]. Individual sensitivity to mood-induced drug seeking also correlates with withdrawal-induced drug seeking suggesting a common mechanism [7]. ...
Article
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Drug addiction may be a goal-directed choice driven by excessive drug value in negative affective states, a habit driven by strong stimulus−response associations, or a compulsion driven by insensitivity to costs imposed on drug seeking. Laboratory animal and human evidence for these three theories is evaluated. Excessive goal theory is supported by dependence severity being associated with greater drug choice/economic demand. Drug choice is demonstrably goal-directed (driven by the expected value of the drug) and can be augmented by stress/negative mood induction and withdrawal—effects amplified in those with psychiatric symptoms and drug use coping motives. Furthermore, psychiatric symptoms confer risk of dependence, and coping motives mediate this risk. Habit theory of addiction has weaker support. Habitual behaviour seen in drug-exposed animals often does not occur in complex decision scenarios, or where responding is rewarded, so habit is unlikely to explain most human addictive behaviour where these conditions apply. Furthermore, most human studies have not found greater propensity to habitual behaviour in drug users or as a function of dependence severity, and the minority that have can be explained by task disengagement producing impaired explicit contingency knowledge. Compulsion theory of addiction also has weak support. The persistence of punished drug seeking in animals is better explained by greater drug value (evinced by the association with economic demand) than by insensitivity to costs. Furthermore, human studies have provided weak evidence that propensity discount cost imposed on drug seeking is associated with dependence severity. These data suggest that human addiction is primarily driven by excessive goal-directed drug choice under negative affect, and less by habit or compulsion. Addiction is pathological because negative states powerfully increase expected drug value acutely outweighing abstinence goals.
... Participants were selected based on their scores on the CWDM subscale of the modified DMQ-R [1] and on their having consumed alcohol in the past 30 days (ensuring participants would have recent drinking experiences to draw from in the interview). Eligible participants scored at least one SD above the mean of their peers on the CWDM subscale (corresponding to a score of 18 or above, Z = 1.03) and had their highest subscale z-score on the CWDM subscale (see Ref. [17]); see S.III for additional information about the database used to compare participants to their peers). CWDM drinkers in this study had scores on the CWDM subscale ranging from 18 to 41 (Z = 1.03-4.94; ...
Article
Introduction and aims: Heavy drinking is prevalent among undergraduate students and is linked with drinking to cope with depression motives for drinking. Drinking to cope with depression remains poorly understood given that alcohol has been shown to have adverse effects on mood when consumed at high doses. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews, the present study examined the perceived effects of alcohol on depressive symptoms as reported by undergraduate students who endorse high levels of drinking to cope with depression. Design and methods: Sixteen undergraduate coping-with-depression-motivated (CWDM) drinkers (nine women, seven men), identified using the Modified Drinking Motives Questionnaire-Revised [1], reported on their experiences of drinking to cope with depression. Thematic analysis was conducted to identify themes and subthemes in the data. Results: Undergraduate students reported several effects of alcohol on affective, cognitive and behavioural depressive symptoms. While most of the perceived alcohol effects they described involved relief from depressive symptoms, some perceived effects involved worsening depressive symptoms. Discussion and conclusions: The study generated several hypotheses to explain drinking to cope with depression, some of which might be testable in future experimental work. Overall, findings suggest the mood-altering effects of alcohol do not fully explain why depression and alcohol use are frequently co-morbid. Indeed, effects of alcohol on cognitive and behavioural depressive symptoms might be particularly reinforcing for CWDM drinkers. Interventions that target co-morbid depression and alcohol use might be improved by teaching CWDM drinkers skills to reduce depressive cognitions and to improve interpersonal interactions outside of drinking contexts.
... Additionally, in AUD patients, this measure of attentional capture by alcohol cues appears to "incubate" (i.e., detection of targets in alcohol cued locations becomes increasingly faster) across abstinence . In the modified color-naming Stroop interference task with words (Stroop, 1935), participants tend to be less accurate and/or slower to identify the color when alcohol-related words are used and this tends to be positively related to typical alcohol use ( (Bauer and Cox, 1998;Cox et al., 2003Cox et al., , 2000Cox et al., , 1999Duka et al., 2002;Cox, 2009, 2006;Grant et al., 2007;Johnsen et al., 1994;Lusher et al., 2004;Modi et al., 2019;Murphy and Garavan, 2011;Ryan, 2002;Sharma et al., 2001;Snelleman et al., 2015;Stautz et al., 2017;Stetter et al., 1995Stetter et al., , 1994Stormark et al., 2000Stormark et al., , 1997, but see: (Albery et al., 2015;Christiansen and Bloor, 2014;Duka and Townshend, 2004;Fridrici et al., 2013;Spanakis et al., 2019)) and may "incubate" with repeated cycles of withdrawal (Duka et al., 2002). ...
Article
Cofresí, R. C., B. D. Bartholow and T. M. Piasecki. Evidence for incentive salience sensitization as a pathway to alcohol use disorder. NEUROSCI BIOBEHAV REV 21(1) XXX-XXX, 1998. - The incentive salience sensitization (ISS) theory of addiction holds that addictive behavior stems from the ability of drugs to progressively sensitize the brain circuitry that mediates attribution of incentive salience (IS) to reward-predictive cues and its behavioral manifestations. In this article, we establish the plausibility of ISS as an etiological pathway to alcohol use disorder (AUD). We provide a comprehensive and critical review of evidence for: (1) the ability of alcohol to sensitize the brain circuitry of IS attribution and expression; and (2) attribution of IS to alcohol-predictive cues and its sensitization in humans and non-human animals. We point out gaps in the literature and how these might be addressed. We also highlight how individuals with different alcohol subjective response phenotypes may differ in susceptibility to ISS as a pathway to AUD. Finally, we discuss important implications of this neuropsychological mechanism in AUD for psychological and pharmacological interventions attempting to attenuate alcohol craving and cue reactivity.
... Third, the stress induced increase in alcohol-seeking correlated with DMQR coping, but not other DMQR subscales. Similar selective associations have been reported in other studies (Austin & Smith, 2008;Birch et al., 2004;Field & Powell, 2007;Field & Quigley, 2009;Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007;Hogarth & Hardy, 2018b;Hogarth, Hardy, et al., 2019;Hogarth et al., 2018;Rousseau, Irons, & Correia, 2011;Woud et al., 2015). By contrast, stress induced alcohol-seeking did not correlate with anxiety or depression symptoms, which contradicts findings from both student and clinical samples (Cooney et al., 1997;Fucito & Juliano, 2009;Hogarth et al., 2018;Hogarth et al., 2017). ...
Article
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The therapeutic effect of mindfulness interventions on problematic drinking is thought to be driven by increased resilience to the impact of stress on negative mood and alcohol-seeking behaviour, but this claim needs empirical support. To address this hypothesis, the current study tested whether brief training of one component of mindfulness - breath counting - would reduce drinkers' sensitivity to the effect of noise stress on subjective mood and alcohol-seeking behaviour. Baseline alcohol-seeking was measured by choice to view alcohol versus food thumbnail pictures in 192 student drinkers. Participants then received a 6-minute audio file which either trained breath counting or recited a popular science extract, in separate groups. All participants were then stressed by a loud industrial noise and alcohol-seeking was measured again simultaneously to quantify the change from baseline. Subjective mood was measured after all three stages (baseline, post intervention, post stress test). The breath counting group were instructed to deploy this technique during the stress test. Results showed that the breath counting versus control intervention improved subjective mood relative to baseline, attenuated the worsening of subjective mood produced by stress induction, and accelerated recovery from a stress induced increase in alcohol-seeking behaviour. Exploratory moderation analysis showed that this accelerated recovery from stress induced alcohol-seeking by breath counting was weaker in more alcohol dependent participants. Mindfulness therapies may improve problematic drinking by increasing resilience to stress induced negative mood and alcohol-seeking, as observed in this study. The weaker therapeutic effect of breath counting in more dependent drinkers may reveal limitations to this intervention strategy.
... Negative affect assessment. State negative affect items were drawn from prior research (Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). Participants were presented with six negative affect adjectives (i.e., "sad," "depressed," "blue," "nervous," "anxious," and "tense"). ...
Article
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Background and aims: Despite increases in female gambling, little research investigates female-specific factors affecting gambling behavior (GB). Although research suggests that some addictive behaviors may fluctuate across menstrual cycle phase (MCP), gambling requires further investigation. In two studies, we examined associations between MCP and three risky GBs: time spent gambling, money spent gambling, and the probability of consuming alcohol while gambling. Associations between MCP and negative affect were also examined in Study 2. We predicted that, consistent with self-medication theory, increases in negative affect (Study 2) and risky GBs (Studies 1 and 2) would occur premenstrually/menstrually relative to other phases. Methods: Data were obtained from 33 female gamblers using a retrospective timeline followback procedure (Study 1) and from 20 female gamblers using a prospective 32-day, daily diary method (Study 2). In Study 2, salivary progesterone levels verified self-reported MCP validity. Results: Findings revealed significant, but somewhat inconsistent, MCP effects on GBs across studies. The self-medication hypothesis was partially supported. Increases relative to another MCP(s) were found for alcohol consumption while gambling premenstrually, time spent gambling menstrually/premenstrually, money spent gambling menstrually, and negative affect premenstrually. Unexpectedly, findings more consistently indicated that GBs increased during ovulation, suggestive of enhanced reward sensitivity. Progesterone assays validated self-reported MCP (Study 2). Discussion and conclusions: The results suggest a role of ovarian hormones on negative affect and GBs in females. This research could lead to the identification of female-specific factors affecting gambling and the development of more effective interventions for females with, or at risk for, problematic gambling.
... It is also possible that levels of stress may moderate this association, that is, that individuals with higher coping motives may drink or use drugs more heavily than their peers with lower coping motives when exposed to stress. Several experimental studies have demonstrated differential responses to stress between participants high and low in drinking coping motives and interactions between coping and stress or negative mood induction on drinkingrelated outcomes, such as attentional bias for alcohol cues, craving, and reinforcement value of alcohol (e.g., Birch et al., 2004;Field & Powell, 2007;Field & Quigley, 2009;Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007;Rousseau, Irons, & Correria, 2011). Only one laboratory study that we are aware of examined whether response to stress interacted with coping motives to predict alcohol consumption. ...
... Future work could also strive to determine whether internal cues (e.g. emotional states) influence implicit and explicit gambling outcome expectancies, as has been found in other areas of addiction (Birch et al., 2008;Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). ...
Article
There is a consensus in the addictions literature that exposure to addiction-relevant cues can precipitate a desire to engage, or actual engagement, in the addictive behaviour. Previous work has shown that exposure to gambling-relevant cues activates gamblers’ positive gambling outcome expectancies (i.e. their beliefs about the positive results of gambling). The current study examined the effects of a new, arguably more ecologically valid cue manipulation (i.e. exposure to a gambling lab environment vs. sterile lab environment) on 61 regular gamblers’ explicit and implicit gambling outcome expectancies. The authors first tested the internal consistency of their implicit reaction time measure of gambling outcome expectancies, the Affective Priming Task. Split-half reliabilities were satisfactory to high (.72 to .88), highlighting an advantage of this task over other characteristically unreliable implicit cognitive measures. Unexpectedly, no predicted between-lab condition differences emerged on most measures of interest, suggesting that peripheral environmental cues that are not the focus of deliberate attentional allocation may not activate positive outcome expectancies. However, there was some evidence that implicit negative gambling outcome expectancies were activated in the gambling lab environment. This latter finding holds clinical relevance as it suggests that presenting peripheral gambling-related cues while treating problem gamblers may facilitate processing of the negative consequences of gambling.
... It is also possible that levels of stress may moderate this association, that is, that individuals with higher coping motives may drink or use drugs more heavily than their peers with lower coping motives when exposed to stress. Several experimental studies have demonstrated differential responses to stress between participants high and low in drinking coping motives and interactions between coping and stress or negative mood induction on drinking-related outcomes, such as attentional bias for alcohol cues, craving, and reinforcement value of alcohol (e.g., Birch et al., 2004;Field & Powell, 2007;Field & Quigley, 2009;Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007;Rousseau, Irons, & Correria, 2011). Only one laboratory study that we are aware of examined whether response to stress interacted with coping motives to predict alcohol consumption. ...
... Because the heroin group was recruited from a methadone clinic and received drug treatment voluntarily, it was difficult to record their daily drug use and relapse behavior after the experiments. Second, some studies have indicated that subjective craving (Franken, 2003), impulsivity and inhibitory control (Ersche et al., 2010) and emotion (Field & Quigley, 2009;Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007) might affect attentional bias in substance users. The influence of the above three factors on attentional bias should be controlled in future research. ...
Article
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Background: Attentional biases toward substance-related stimuli might play a contributing role in addictive behaviors. Objectives: This study investigated the selective attention to substance-related stimuli in heroin dependents receiving methadone maintenance therapy. Methods: Thirty outpatients receiving methadone maintenance treatment for heroin dependence and 38 healthy controls completed a visual probe task with concurrent eye movement monitoring. Results: The results showed that the heroin group reacted faster to probes associated with substance-related pictures than neutral pictures, and they directed more initial fixations and maintained longer initial fixation durations toward substance-related pictures than neutral pictures. However, attentional bias was not correlated with addiction severity in the heroin group. Conclusion: These findings suggest that attentional bias towards substance-related cues occurs in heroin dependents, although this bias might not be associated with the severity of drug-using behavior.
... Further evidence for an association between AB and subjective motivational states comes from studies that directly manipulated the motivational state before observing the effect on AB. As reviewed elsewhere (Field & Cox, 2008;, experimental manipulations such as alcohol administration, nicotine deprivation, negative mood induction and cue exposure led to increases in subjective craving that were accompanied by increases in AB (Bradley, Garner, Hudson, & Mogg, 2007;Field & Powell, 2007;Field & Quigley, 2009;Field, Rush, Cole, & Goudie, 2007;Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007;Ramirez, Monti, & Colwill, 2015a, 2015bSchoenmakers, Wiers, & Field, 2008), although this was not seen in all studies (Eastwood, Bradley, Mogg, Tyler, & Field, 2010;Mogg & Bradley, 2002;. Other experimental manipulations that reduced subjective craving also suggest correspondence between AB and craving: reductions in subjective craving accompanied by reduced AB were seen after brief exercise (Oh & Taylor, 2013Van Rensburg, Taylor, & Hodgson, 2009), devaluation of alcoholic drinks by making them taste unpleasant (Rose, Brown, Field, & Hogarth, 2013), and emotional reappraisal (Szasz, Szentagotai, & Hofmann, 2012). ...
Article
Full-text available
Objectives: The purpose of this article is to critically evaluate the following claims derived from contemporary theoretical models of attentional bias (AB) for food- and drug-related stimuli: (a) AB is a characteristic feature of obesity and addiction, (b) AB predicts future behavior, (c) AB exerts a causal influence on consummatory behavior, and (d) AB reflects appetitive motivational processes. Method: A focused discussion of the relevant literature is presented. Results: The available evidence reveals inconsistencies with the aforementioned claims. Specifically, AB is not consistently associated with individual differences in body weight or drug use, AB does not consistently predict or influence distal consummatory behavior, and AB may be influenced by both appetitive and aversive motivational processes. These insights are synthesized into a theoretical account that claims that AB for food- and drug-related stimuli arises from momentary changes in evaluations of those stimuli that can be either positive (when the incentive value of the food or drug is high), negative (when individuals have a goal to change their behavior, and those stimuli are perceived as aversive), or both (when individuals experience motivational conflict, or ambivalence). Conclusions: The proposed theoretical synthesis may account for the contributions of appetitive and aversive motivational processes involved in self-regulatory conflicts to AB, and it yields testable predictions about the conditions under which AB should predict and have a causal influence on future consummatory behavior. This has implications for the prediction and modification of unhealthy behaviors and associated disorders. (PsycINFO Database Record
... Furthermore, mood induction studies may further advance our understanding of drinking motives and alcohol-related IBs. To illustrate, Grant, Stewart, and Birch (2007) showed mood-congruent effects on implicit alcohol-related concepts after a mood manipulation (see also Ralston et al., 2013), and such a relation can also be expected in the present context. Finally, investigating whether alcohol-related IBs are associated with other cognitive biases (e.g., attention biases) could be very informative. ...
... However, overt manipulations of negative mood appear to increase attentional biases (e.g. Field and Powell 2007;Grant et al. 2007) and automatic approach tendencies for alcohol cues, at least in some subgroups of participants (Ostafin and Brooks 2011;Cousijn et al. 2014). Aside from these effects of negative mood, it appears that even very overt manipulations of the motivation to drink or to refrain from drinking do not have particularly robust effects on automatic alcohol cognitions, particularly automatic approach tendencies. ...
... Neuroticism, hopelessness, and anxiety-sensitivity are associated with alcohol problems and substance use, and individuals with elevated levels of these traits use substances in order to regulate a negative affective state, eg, to cope with depression. 8 The hypothesis of this study was that there is a difference between adolescents with substance disorder and adolescents not abusing any substance with regard to their personality traits, the parenting styles of their parents, and any psychiatric comorbidities. All these interact to create important risk factors for substance-use disorders among adolescent patients. ...
Article
Objectives: To study parenting styles and psychological correlates among a group of Egyptian adolescents with substance-use disorder. Materials and Methods: A case-control study conducted at the Adolescents' substance abuse outpatient clinic, Helwan Psychiatric Hospital. The case group of 81 male adolescents, age range 12 to 18 years, with substance-use disorders matched with the control group of 80 volunteer male adolescents who had never used drugs. The Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview for Children and Adolescents, the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, the Junior Eysenck Personality Questionnaire, and the Questionnaire of Parental Attitudes as Realized by Adolescents were applied on members of both groups. Results: The case group had a higher positive family history of psychiatric illness and drug abuse (P=0.006, <0.001). Mothers of patients in the case group showed higher independent parenting (P=0.039) and consistency (P=0.02), whereas their fathers showed significant rejection (P<0.001). Cases had higher psychoticism and neuroticism (P<0.001, 0.001). Significantly more patients in the case group met the criteria of major depression, and conduct, oppositional defiant, psychotic, and mood disorders with psychotic features. Also, there was a significantly higher suicidality risk (P<0.001) among patients in the case group. Conclusions: Adolescents with substance-use disorder had a more significant family history of psychiatric illness and substance abuse. Their mothers unexpectedly adopted a more consistent and independent parental style, whereas fathers were more rejecting and had an overall negative parental style. Adolescents in the case group had significantly higher psychoticism and neuroticism. Moreover, they met the criteria of major depressive disorder, conduct disorder, oppositional defiant disorder, lifetime psychotic disorders, and mood disorder with psychotic features significantly more than the adolescents in the control group.
... El test desarrollado en nuestro estudio supone un instrumento de bajo coste y sencilla aplicación con una gran utilidad para la comprensión de los mecanismos subyacentes en la conducta alcohólica. Investigación previa utilizando la versión inglesa del instrumento ha mostrado que los procesos de atención selectiva para estímulos alcohólicos evaluados por el test están relacionados con la alta reactividad y el deseo subjetivo por beber que genera la exposición a estos estímulos (p.e., Duka & Townshend, 2004;Grant, Stewart & Birch, 2007), lo cual en último término podría determinar el inicio de la conducta de consumo alcohólico (Field & Cox, 2008). De este modo, futura investigación debería examinar la efectividad del instrumento validado para detectar patrones atencionales de riesgo no sólo en pacientes con problemas clínicos de alcoholismo sino también a nivel primario (i.e., antes de que se inicie el consumo), así como a nivel secundario (i.e., en personas con un patrón de consumo de riesgo moderado/alto). ...
Article
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Attention bias for alcohol has proved useful to distinguish peo-ple with a pathological consumption of people who do not, and depend-ents who are more likely to fall in consumption. The aim of this study was to validate the Spanish version of the Alcohol Stroop test, designed to evaluate attention biases for alcohol in alcohol-dependent patients. The sample was composed by 173 participants divided into 2 groups: 1) “Pa-tients” (n = 88) meeting criteria for alcohol dependence; and 2) “Control” (n = 85) having a low risk for alcohol consumption, that completed the Stroop color naming Task (Classic Stroop), the Neutral Stroop test and the alcohol Stroop test. Statistically significant differences were found in the in-terference effects calculated for the Classic and Alcohol Stroop tests. Pa-tients compared to control participants showed a higher interference effect for alcohol-related stimuli than for neutral stimuli. These effects were ac-counted by an attention bias for alcohol-related information in patients. ROC curves were calculated for the three interference effects, showing an area under the curve statistically significant in the Classic Stroop interfer-ence and the Alcohol Stroop interference. This study provides the valida-tion of the Spanish version of the Alcohol Stroop test that allows to evalu-ate attention biases for alcohol stimuli in individuals with both pathologic alcohol consumption and alcohol dependence.
... For example, laboratory stressors increase AAB, but only among drinkers with high levels of coping motives (Field & Powell, 2007;Field & Quigley, 2009). Conversely, associations between PA and implicit biases are conditional upon level of enhancement motives (Birch et al., 2008;Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). These findings suggest that person × situation interactions contribute to AAB and individual drinking decisions. ...
Article
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Alcohol-related attentional biases are positively associated with drinking history and may represent a mechanism by which alcohol use behavior is maintained over time. This study was designed to address two unresolved issues regarding alcohol-related attention biases. Specifically, this study tested whether acute changes in positive and negative mood increase attentional biases toward alcohol cues and whether coping and enhancement drinking motives moderate these effects. Participants were 100 college students aged 18-25, who drank alcohol at least once in the last 90days. In a 2×3 mixed design, participants were randomized to one of three mood conditions (neutral, negative, or positive) and completed visual-probe tasks pre- and post-mood-induction. Attentional biases toward alcohol cues were significantly associated with alcohol consumption among men, but not women. Although the mood manipulation was highly successful, attentional biases did not vary as a function of mood condition and hypothesized moderating effects of drinking motives were not significant. The largely null findings of the experiment are discussed in light of the fact that the visual probe task had poor reliability. Issues related to the reliability of visual-probe task are discussed, as more research is needed to evaluate and improve the psychometrics of this method. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
... There is emerging evidence suggesting that in addition to previous drinking levels and exposure to alcohol cues, attentional bias may be influenced by individual motivational and social factors. For example, attentional bias for alcohol cues was activated differently for individuals whose drinking motivation was based on mood enhancement rather than coping with negative affect after experiencing a positive mood induction through music (Birch et al., 2008;Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). Those with drinking motivation based on coping with negative affect did not activate attentional bias after either positive or negative musical mood induction; those with drinking motivation based on positive mood enhancement activated a significant bias for alcohol-related stimuli after positive mood induction. ...
... El test desarrollado en nuestro estudio supone un instrumento de bajo coste y sencilla aplicación con una gran utilidad para la comprensión de los mecanismos subyacentes en la conducta alcohólica. Investigación previa utilizando la versión inglesa del instrumento ha mostrado que los procesos de atención selectiva para estímulos alcohólicos evaluados por el test están relacionados con la alta reactividad y el deseo subjetivo por beber que genera la exposición a estos estímulos (p.e., Duka & Townshend, 2004;Grant, Stewart & Birch, 2007), lo cual en último término podría determinar el inicio de la conducta de consumo alcohólico (Field & Cox, 2008). De este modo, futura investigación debería examinar la efectividad del instrumento validado para detectar patrones atencionales de riesgo no sólo en pacientes con problemas clínicos de alcoholismo sino también a nivel primario (i.e., antes de que se inicie el consumo), así como a nivel secundario (i.e., en personas con un patrón de consumo de riesgo moderado/alto). ...
Article
Full-text available
Attention bias for alcohol has proved useful to distinguish people with a pathological consumption of people who do not, and dependents who are more likely to fall in consumption. The aim of this study was to validate the Spanish version of the Alcohol Stroop test, designed to evaluate attention biases for alcohol in alcohol-dependent patients. The sample was composed by 173 participants divided into 2 groups: 1) “Patients” (n = 88) meeting criteria for alcohol dependence; and 2) “Control” (n = 85) having a low risk for alcohol consumption, that completed the Stroop color naming Task (Classic Stroop), the Neutral Stroop test and the alcohol Stroop test. Statistically significant differences were found in the interference effects calculated for the Classic and Alcohol Stroop tests. Patients compared to control participants showed a higher interference effect for alcohol-related stimuli than for neutral stimuli. These effects were accounted by an attention bias for alcohol-related information in patients. ROC curves were calculated for the three interference effects, showing an area under the curve statistically significant in the Classic Stroop interference and the Alcohol Stroop interference. This study provides the validation of the Spanish version of the Alcohol Stroop test that allows to evaluate attention biases for alcohol stimuli in individuals with both pathologic alcohol consumption and alcohol dependence.
... Furthermore, mood induction studies may further advance our understanding of drinking motives and alcohol-related IBs. To illustrate, Grant, Stewart, and Birch (2007) showed mood-congruent effects on implicit alcohol-related concepts after a mood manipulation (see also Ralston et al., 2013), and such a relation can also be expected in the present context. Finally, investigating whether alcohol-related IBs are associated with other cognitive biases (e.g., attention biases) could be very informative. ...
... Thus, negative mood-drinking contingencies reported by this group would be precipitated by the drinking itself and would manifest as stronger negative moods during or following consumption. Moreover, evidence from implicit priming studies indicates that college students who report high global DTC motivation show stronger links between negative moods and alcohol expectancies (Birch et al., 2004) and alcohol-related cues (Grant et al., 2007). Thus, strong endorsement of DTC motivation might refl ect an awareness of negative mood-drinking contingencies driven by these automatic processes, where in actuality these individuals' drinking levels are not consistently preceded by relative increases in negative mood. ...
Article
Objective: This study examined whether global drinking-to-cope (DTC) motivation moderates negative mood-drinking contingencies and negative mood-motivation contingencies at the daily level of analysis. Method: Data came from a daily diary study of college student drinking (N = 1,636; 53% female; Mage = 19.2 years). Fixed-interval models tested whether global DTC motivation moderated relations between daily negative mood and that evening's drinking and episodic DTC. Time-to-drink models examined whether global DTC motivation moderated the effects of weekly negative mood on the immediacy of drinking and DTC in the weekly cycle. Results: More evening drinking occurred on days characterized by relatively higher anxiety or anger, and students were more likely to report DTC on days when they experienced greater sadness. However, only the daily Anxiety × Global DTC Motivation interaction for number of drinks consumed was consistent with hypotheses. Moreover, students reported drinking, heavy drinking, and DTC earlier in weeks characterized by relatively higher anxiety or anger, but no hypothesized interactions with global DTC motivation were found. Conclusions: RESULTS indicate that negative mood is associated with increased levels of drinking and drinking for coping reasons among college students but that the strength of these relations does not differ by global levels of DTC motivation. These findings raise the possibility that global DTC measures are insufficient for examining within-person DTC processes. Further implications of these results are discussed, including future directions that may determine the circumstances under which, and for whom, DTC occurs.
... Interestingly, a recent study demonstrated that a negative mood induction implicitly activated alcohol-approach memory associations in regular alcohol drinkers with high, but not low coping motives (20). In line with this finding, individuals who reported drinking to cope with anxiety showed an increased attentional bias for alcohol-related words after an anxious mood induction, whereas drinkers high on enhancement motives showed increased attentional bias after a positive mood induction (32). ...
Article
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The tendency to approach alcohol-related stimuli is known as the alcohol-approach bias and has been related to heavy alcohol use. It is currently unknown whether the alcohol-approach bias is more pronounced after emotional priming. The main aim of this study was to investigate whether positive and negative emotional primes would modulate the alcohol-approach bias. For this purpose, a new contextual emotional prime-approach avoidance task was developed, containing both negative and positive emotional primes. Explicit coping drinking motives were expected to be related to an increased alcohol-approach bias after negative primes. Results of 65 heavy and 50 occasional drinkers showed that the alcohol-approach bias was increased in both groups during negative emotional priming. This appeared to be due to slower alcohol avoidance rather than faster alcohol approach. This change in alcohol-approach bias was positively related to explicit enhancement drinking motives and negatively related to alcohol use-related problems. A stronger alcohol-approach bias in heavy compared to occasional drinkers could not be replicated here, and coping drinking motives were not related to the alcohol-approach bias in any of the emotional contexts. The current findings suggest that both occasional and heavy drinkers have a selective difficulty to avoid alcohol-related cues in a negative emotional context. Negative reinforcement may therefore be involved in different types of drinking patterns. The influence of emotional primes on alcohol-related action tendencies may become smaller when alcohol use becomes more problematic, which is in line with habit accounts of addiction.
... Alcohol use for high copingmotivated drinkers might prime negative affective states and/or related cognitions. Indeed, studies using implicit priming techniques have shown that individuals with high DTC motivation show stronger connections between negative mood states and both alcohol expectancies (Birch et al., 2004) and attention to alcohol-related cues (Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). Activation of such affective states and related cognitions during drinking, though short-lived, might set into motion the affect-exacerbation process and subsequent drain on self-control resources described above. ...
Article
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We examined among college students the interactive effects of drinking to cope motivation, anxiety and depression symptoms, and drinking level in predicting drinking-related problems. Using an Internet-based survey, participants (N = 844, 53% women) first reported on their drinking motives and monthly for up to 3 months, they reported on their drinking level, anxiety, depression and DRPs. We found a 3-way interaction between drinking to cope motivation and average levels of drinking and anxiety (but not depression) in predicting drinking-related problems. Specifically, among individuals with stronger drinking to cope motives, higher mean levels of anxiety were associated with a stronger positive association between mean drinking levels and drinking-related problems. We did not find 3-way interactions in the models examining monthly changes in anxiety, depression and drinking in predicting monthly drinking-related problems. However, individuals high in drinking to cope motivation showed a stronger positive association between changes in drinking level and drinking-related problems. The results are discussed in terms of mechanisms related to attention-allocation and self-control resource depletion.
... The application of a more reliable paradigm to assess priming effects is another recommendation, and implementing a manipulation that guarantees a thorough processing of the affective primes may be crucial, too. In student samples, for example, mood induction procedures have been applied quite successfully when studying cognitive processes related to the automatic activation of alcohol-related concepts (Birch et al., 2008; Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). To conclude, the present study was designed to identify boundary conditions of the automatic activation of alcoholrelated memory associations by affective words in a clinical population of alcohol-dependent inpatients. ...
Data
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The present study tested to what extent alcohol-related concepts are automatically activated by negative affective words. Participants were alcohol-dependent inpatients (n = 847) and an inpatient control group (n = 130). An affective priming task was used to assess the automatic activation of alcohol-related memory associations. Executive control was assessed with an adapted Stroop task. We expected alcohol-dependent inpatients to show enhanced alcohol activation after negative primes. In addition, we predicted that this enhanced negative priming effect would be further qualified by participants' levels of depressive symptoms. Finally, we expected the interaction between executive control and priming effect as well as the interaction between executive control, priming effect and depressive symptoms to be predictive for group membership. Results showed that alcohol-dependent inpatients did not show an priming effect by negative words, and this effect was not moderated by levels of depressive symptoms. Moreover, group membership was not predicted by the interaction between priming effect and executive control, nor by the interaction between priming effect, executive control and depressive symptoms. We conclude that these results are most likely due to the particular population we studied (i.e., inpatients instead of at-risk populations) and to features of the priming task (i.e., low reliability, part of a test battery).
... Sixth, our approach for categorizing gamblers into motivebased groups did not account for possible overlap in motives between groups. Future research could use a correlational approach with an unselected sample or could use more extreme groups (groups scoring high on only one motive subscale; see Grant, Stewart, & Birch, 2007). Finally, unequal ratios of males and females across groups could have been prevented if a quota system had been in place to ensure that the sex ratio was similar across groups. ...
Article
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Problem gambling may reflect a maladaptive means of fulfilling specific affect-regulation motives, such as enhancing positive affect or coping with negative affect. Research with clinical populations indicates that disorders with prominent affective symptoms are characterized by attentional biases for symptom-congruent information. Thus, we assessed whether problem gamblers with enhancement motives for gambling would demonstrate attentional biases for positive emotional information, relative to other types of emotional information, and problem gamblers with coping motives for gambling would demonstrate attentional biases for negative emotional information, compared with other types of emotional information. In addition, we expected motive-congruent biases to be stronger in problem gamblers than nonproblem gamblers. To test these hypotheses, problem and nonproblem gamblers received an emotional orienting task in which neutral, negative, and positive pictorial cues appeared to one side of the computer screen, followed by target words in cued or uncued locations. In a look-away condition, participants had to shift attention away from pictures to respond to predominantly uncued targets, whereas in a look-toward condition, they had to orient to pictures to categorize predominantly cued targets. The results revealed motive-congruent orienting biases and disengagement lags for emotional pictures in problem gamblers. The link between motives and affective biases was less apparent in nonproblem gamblers. Results suggest that attentional measures may provide a useful complement to the subjective methodologies that are typically employed in studying problem gamblers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved).
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Several experimental paradigms were developed to measure attentional biases towards alcohol-related cues. However, most of them are based on reaction times to two-dimensional stimuli displayed on a computer screen, such that their ecological validity has been questioned. To address this, we integrated an eye tracking system into a virtual reality headset (ET-VR) and measured attentional biases in a subclinical population of alcohol users. In this exploratory study, forty social drinkers were recruited and immersed in a virtual bar including alcohol-related stimuli. Attentional focus was assessed using dwell time and number of fixations for these alcohol-related stimuli as well as for neutral stimuli unrelated to alcohol consumption. The results show that the number of fixations and, to a lesser extent, the dwell time for alcohol-related cues were positively correlated with the drinking motivation of the participants. In contrast, no significant correlation was found for neutral stimuli. In conclusion, the present study shows that alcohol-induced attentional biases can be studied using an ET-VR device in a subclinical population of alcohol users.
Article
This paper outlines a putative pathway for experimental psychopathology research developing psychological models of clinical disorders. The pathway uses established external validity criteria to define the pathway and clarifies the important role that research conducted on healthy participants can play in our understanding of clinical disorders. Defining a research pathway for experimental psychopathology in this way has a number of benefits It would (1) make explicit the need to address the external validity of developed models, (2) provide a clear set of criteria that would be required to extend research on healthy individuals to diagnostic populations, and (3) recommend using general psychological knowledge when developing models of psychopathology.
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Social anxiety (SA) is thought to relate to alcohol misuse. However, current evidence is inconsistent - especially in young adulthood. Recent non-experimental data show that trait impulsivity moderates the effect of SA on alcohol misuse. Specifically, this work suggests that concurrently elevated impulsivity may draw attention to the immediate, anxiolytic effects of drinking - thus promoting alcohol misuse among those high in SA. Otherwise, without elevated impulsivity, a socially anxious person may not drink due to focusing on alcohol's possible negative outcomes (e.g., embarrassing behaviours). The next step in this research is to examine if impulsivity impacts in-the-moment subjective craving among socially anxious individuals. This was the goal of the present experiment. After baseline measures, undergraduate participants (N = 110) completed the Trier Social Stress Test followed by an alcohol (versus neutral) cue exposure. Subjective craving ratings were collected at both baseline and post-cue exposure. Moderation analyses revealed that socially anxious individuals endorsed strong cravings following an alcohol (but not a neutral) cue exposure, but only if they also had elevated impulsivity. In-lab craving was positively correlated with retrospective reports of alcohol misuse. Our findings demonstrate that impulsivity contributes to SA-related risk for alcohol misuse.
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This study tested whether a novel concurrent pictorial choice procedure, inspired by animal self-administration models, is sensitive to the motivational effect of negative mood induction on alcohol-seeking in hazardous drinkers. Forty-eight hazardous drinkers (scoring ≥7 on the Alcohol Use Disorders Inventory) recruited from the community completed measures of alcohol dependence, depression, and drinking coping motives. Baseline alcohol-seeking was measured by percent choice to enlarge alcohol- versus food-related thumbnail images in two alternative forced-choice trials. Negative and positive mood was then induced in succession by means of self-referential affective statements and music, and percent alcohol choice was measured after each induction in the same way as baseline. Baseline alcohol choice correlated with alcohol dependence severity, r = .42, p = .003, drinking coping motives (in two questionnaires, r = .33, p = .02 and r = .46, p = .001), and depression symptoms, r = .31, p = .03. Alcohol choice was increased by negative mood over baseline (p < .001, ηp2 = .280), and matched baseline following positive mood (p = .54, ηp2 = .008). The negative mood-induced increase in alcohol choice was not related to gender, alcohol dependence, drinking to cope, or depression symptoms (ps ≥ .37). The concurrent pictorial choice measure is a sensitive index of the relative value of alcohol, and provides an accessible experimental model to study negative mood-induced relapse mechanisms in hazardous drinkers.
Article
Background: There is great interest in the role of the behavioral inhibition system (BIS) and the behavioral approach system (BAS) in the etiology of alcohol use because of the strong links of these systems to neuroscience and cognitive models of addiction. The revised Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory suggests that the strength of the BIS and BAS jointly influences behavior, so-called the joint systems hypothesis. Yet, relatively little work has examined this hypothesis, particularly with respect to alcohol information processing. Grounded in dual-process theories of alcohol information processing, this study aimed to clarify the roles of implicit (i.e., automatic processes) and explicit (i.e., controlled processes) cognitions in BIS-related drinking. When anxious and presented with an alcohol (vs. neutral) cue, we expected those with an elevated BIS to have increased implicit and explicit alcohol cognitions related to tension reduction, but only at elevated BAS. Shifts in cognitions following cue exposure were expected to positively correlate with alcohol misuse. Methods: Students (N = 110) completed baseline measures followed by the Trier Social Stress Test. This was followed by a cue exposure (random assignment to alcohol or water cue), during which participants completed postmood assessments of implicit/explicit alcohol cognitions. Results: Overall, participants' implicit alcohol cognition was negative. The effect of BIS on implicit and explicit cognitions was moderated by BAS; however, results were not as hypothesized. In the alcohol condition only (when controlling for baseline implicit cognition), BIS predicted relatively weak implicit negative alcohol cognition, but only at low BAS. Interestingly, in the alcohol condition only, BIS predicted increased explicit reward (but not relief) expectancies, but only at high BAS. Changes in explicit reward expectancies positively correlated with alcohol misuse. Conclusions: Our results suggest that explicit cognitions may be relevant to drinking among anxious individuals who are also reward responsive. Cognitive behavioral interventions should target reward expectancies to reduce anxiety-related drinking.
Chapter
This chapter reviews the methods that have been most widely used in clinical laboratory studies to examine stress-induced motivation to consume drugs or alcohol. It reviews studies that employ stressors specifically to examine the effect on subsequent motivation to use drugs or alcohol. the term “stress induction” is used broadly to reflect all forms of experimentally induced negative affect. Fear, anger, sadness, frustration, physical discomfort, pain, and embarrassment, by definition, are associated with activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and/or sympathetic nervous system and are included in this chapter under the term “stress” or “negative affect.” Stressors (pharmacological, physical, or psychological) that have been used in neuroimaging studies are also discussed. The chapter also reviews studies that include both non-dependent and addicted participants and all drugs of abuse.
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Gambling outcome expectancies refer to the anticipated outcomes that gamblers expect will occur from gambling (i.e., learned memory associations between gambling cues, behavior, and outcomes). Unlike previous approaches to gambling outcome expectancies that have predominantly focused on the valence of outcome expectancies (positive vs. negative), the present study investigated two specific types of positive gambling outcome expectancies: reward and relief gambling outcome expectancies. Specifically, the primary purpose of the current research was to examine whether gambling prime exposure activates different types of positive gambling outcome expectancies in enhancement- versus coping-motivated gamblers. Fifty adult, community-recruited regular gamblers performed a reaction time (RT) task and completed a self-report expectancy scale, both designed to assess reward and relief gambling outcome expectancies. They also completed the Gambling Motives Questionnaire (Stewart and Zack in Addiction 103:1110-1117 2008) to assess their levels of coping and enhancement motives for gambling. As hypothesized, reward gambling outcome expectancies were more strongly activated by gambling prime exposure than relief outcome expectancies on the RT task for gamblers with high enhancement motives. On the self-report expectancy measure, high enhancement-motivated gamblers endorsed stronger reward gambling outcome expectancies than low enhancement-motivated gamblers, and high coping-motivated gamblers endorsed stronger relief gambling outcome expectancies than low coping-motivated gamblers. Results suggest that automatic activation of reward gambling outcome expectancies is particularly strong for high enhancement-motivated gamblers. Possible reasons for the failure to observe an association between coping gambling motives and automatic relief gambling outcome expectancies are discussed.
Article
Objective: Stress evokes thoughts about alcohol and enhances alcohol's rewarding value in drinkers who use alcohol to cope with negative affect. The present study extends prior research by examining whether this effect applies to actual alcohol consumption following a stressor and whether individuals with high and low coping motives for drinking differ in stress reactivity. Method: Nondependent drinkers with high scores (﹥1 SD above national norms) on the coping motives subscale on the Drinking Motives Questionnaire (n = 41; 46% women) were enrolled along with age- and gender-matched nondependent drinkers with low coping motives (n = 41). Participants were randomized to receive the Trier Social Stress Test or a no-stress control condition. Following the stress manipulation, participants could consume up to 473 ml of beer in a "taste test," a covert measure of alcohol consumption. Stress reactivity was measured with both objective and subjective indices, and milliliters of beer consumed was the alcohol-relevant outcome. Results: Participants with high coping motives showed a less robust stress response to the Trier Social Stress Test than participants with low coping motives for drinking. However, the stressor did not result in greater consumption of alcohol (i.e., no main effect of stress induction) or differential drinking in the two motive groups (i.e., no Stressor × Coping Motive group interaction). Conclusions: Findings suggest that nondependent drinkers with and without coping motives for drinking may experience a stress provocation differently, but exposure to a standardized social stressor does not lead to differential drinking in these groups in a clinical laboratory setting.
Article
The present study investigated the associations between temperamental reactivity, drinking motives, alcohol consumption and alcohol-related consequences. Furthermore, it investigated whether drinking motives mediate the relations between temperamental reactivity and the alcohol use variables. The sample consisted of 188 adolescents (64.9% boys) between the ages of 13–20 years (M age = 16.9, SD = 1.32). Results revealed that the temperament factors of high BAS fun seeking and high negative affectivity were related to alcohol consumption and alcohol-related consequences respectively. Furthermore, high social and enhancement motives and low conformity motives were associated with alcohol consumption, whereas high coping-depression motives were associated with alcohol-related consequences. Finally, the relation between BAS fun seeking and alcohol consumption was mediated by enhancement and social motives and the association between negative affectivity and alcohol-related consequences was mediated by coping-depression motives. These results highlight the importance of focusing on temperament profiles and their associated drinking motives in the prevention and intervention of alcohol use problems among adolescents.
Article
Research suggests that depressed mood is associated with alcohol-related problems, though its relation with drinking behavior has been inconsistent across studies. Efforts to better understand the link between depressed mood and alcohol use have examined drinking motives as a potentially important moderating variable. The current study sought to examine whether drinking motives moderate the influence of depressed mood on alcohol-related action tendencies. Based on Baker, Morse, and Sherman's (1986) positive and negative reinforcement schema model, two competing moderational hypotheses regarding the influence of depressed mood on appetitive responses for alcohol were tested. One hundred and sixty-nine college student drinkers completed assessments of drinking motives and alcohol use. Subjects were exposed to a neutral or depressed mood induction followed by a computerized measure of action tendencies toward alcohol stimuli. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine whether the influence of depressed mood on action tendencies toward alcohol was moderated by drinking motives. Results showed that there was a significant interaction between mood induction condition and enhancement motives, such that depressed mood appeared to suppress appetitive responding toward alcohol among those with higher enhancement motives. In contrast, there was no evidence that coping motives moderated the association between mood and appetitive response to alcohol. These results suggest that inhibiting affect states associated with one's motivational disposition for drinking may result in the devaluation of alcohol. Limitations and implications are discussed.
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Implicit and explicit alcohol-related cognitions were measured in 2 dimensions: positive-negative (valence) and arousal-sedation, with 2 versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; A. G. Greenwald, D. E. McGhee, & J. L. Schwartz) and related explicit measures. Heavy drinkers (n = 24) strongly associated alcohol with arousal on the arousal IAT (especially men) and scored higher on explicit arousal expectancies than light drinkers (n = 24). On the valence IAT, both light and heavy drinkers showed strong negative implicit associations with alcohol that contrasted with their positive explicit judgments (heavy drinkers were more positive). Implicit and explicit cognitions uniquely contributed to the prediction of 1-month prospective drinking. Heavy drinkers' implicit arousal associations could reflect the sensitized psychomotor-activating response to drug cues, a motivational mechanism hypothesized to underlie the etiology of addictive behaviors.
Chapter
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Recent research suggests it is important to take individual differences into account when attempting to predict drinking or treat alcohol problems. One variable thought to exert a potent proximal influence on alcohol consumption is an individual’s self-reported motives for drinking (Cox and Klinger, 1988). Having high levels of internal, emotion-management motives for drinking, such as coping motives (CM; drinking to relieve sadness) or enhancement motives (EM; drinking to enhance happiness), is thought to be “risky” because internal, more than external (or social/affiliative), motives predict heavy and problematic alcohol consumption (cf. Cooper, 1994). Thus, the goal of recent alcohol research has been to identify the unique emotional antecedents of these “risky” reasons for drinking of EM and CM. Several studies provide indirect evidence suggesting that negative mood states prompt drinking specifically for CM drinkers, and that positive mood states prompt drinking specifically for EM drinkers; but only one recent unpublished study, conducted in our laboratory, has directly examined this hypothesis. While our chapter will include a review of previous relevant research, the primary purpose of our chapter shall be to report on the findings obtained from this latter investigation. In this investigation, 73 undergraduates who endorsed either extreme CM or EM for drinking were randomly assigned to listen to either positive or negative musical mood induction procedures (MMIP; Mongrain and Trambakoulos, 1997). Following a mood manipulation check, they were then asked to complete a mock taste-rating task, an excellent unobtrusive measure of drinking behaviour (cf. Higgins and Marlatt, 1973). As hypothesized, EM drinkers in the positive mood condition (vs. other groups) had significantly higher levels of average alcohol (but not non-alcohol) consumed. Unexpectedly, however, this effect was only significant for male (and not female) participants. Also as hypothesized, CM drinkers in the negative mood condition (vs. other groups) had a significantly higher ratio of alcohol consumed, as a function of total beverage consumed. Unexpectedly, however, this effect was only significant for female (and not male) participants. We suggest that emotions may frequently and powerfully influence drinking decision-making, but that mood-drinking relations cannot be adequately understood without a consideration of individual difference variables, such as drinking motives and gender. We conclude this chapter with an integration of the findings reviewed which highlights important areas for future research, as well as key implications for understanding and managing alcohol misuse.
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Despite consistent evidence that alcohol can be used to cope with negative emotions or to enhance positive emotions, research on drinking motives has focused primarily on coping and social motives. This article reports on the development of a 3-factor measure that also assesses enhancement motives. Using confirmatory factor analysis, the authors demonstrated that enhancement motives are empirically distinct from coping and social motives and that a correlated 3-factor model fits the data equally well across race and gender groups in a large representative sample. Each drinking motive was also shown to predict distinct aspects of alcohol use and abuse. Finally, interaction analyses suggested that coping and enhancement motives differ in the magnitude of their effects on drinking behavior across Blacks and Whites and that enhancement motives differ in their effects across men and women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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( This reprinted article originally appeared in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1935, Vol 18, 643–662. The following abstract of the original article appeared in PA, Vol 10:1863.) In this study pairs of conflicting stimuli, both being inherent aspects of the same symbols, were presented simultaneously (a name of one color printed in the ink of another color—a word stimulus and a color stimulus). The difference in time for reading the words printed in colors and the same words printed in black is the measure of the interference of color stimuli on reading words. The difference in the time for naming the colors in which the words are printed and the same colors printed in squares is the measure of the interference of conflicting word stimuli on naming colors. The interference of conflicting color stimuli on the time for reading 100 words (each word naming a color unlike the ink-color of its print) caused an increase of 2.3 sec or 5.6% over the normal time for reading the same words printed in black. This increase is not reliable, but the interference of conflicting word stimuli on the time for naming 100 colors (each color being the print of a word which names another color) caused an increase of 47.0 sec or 74.3% of the normal time for naming colors printed in squares.… (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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A 4-factor measure of drinking motives based on a conceptual model by M. Cox and E. Klinger (see PA, Vol 75:32975; see also 1990) is presented. Using data from a representative household sample of 1,243 Black and White adolescents, confirmatory factor analyses showed that the hypothesized model provided an excellent fit to the data and that the factor pattern was invariant across gender, race, and age. Each drinking motive was related to a distinct pattern of contextual antecedents and drinking-related outcomes, and these relationships did not generally vary across demographic subgroups. Results support both the conceptual validity of Cox and Klinger's model and the utility of this measure for clinical and research purposes across a diverse range of adolescent populations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
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The role of intrusive cognitions was investigated using the emotional Stroop effect, in which irrelevant threat-related words interfered more with color naming than neutral words. In Experiment 1, the emotional Stroop effect decreased over blocks, indicating habituation. In Experiment 2, the interference persisted when different words were used in each block, suggesting that the habituation occurred at the level of the individual stimulus. However, there was some evidence for a decline in interference, suggesting some category-based habituation. In Experiment 3, the interference continued for emotional words relative to neutral words even when the neutral stimuli formed a category. In Experiment 4, neutral words were contrasted with positive and negative words; interference occurred only for the negative words. This result undermines alternative interpretations in terms of emotionality or self-relevance and highlights the critical role of threat.
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Longitudinal data were obtained from a nonclinical sample of 1,308 male and female adolescents covering the age range from 12 to 21. Factor analyses of 52 symptoms and/or consequences of alcohol use yielded three problem dimensions. In addition, a unidimensional, 23-item scale (the Rutgers Alcohol Problem Index, RAPI) was constructed with an internal consistency of .92. Correlations between RAPI and alcohol-use intensity were moderately strong for all age groups at each test occasion (ranging from .20 to .57), yet low enough to suggest that identification of problem drinkers requires both types of measures. The results suggest that the RAPI may be a useful tool for the standardized and efficient assessment of problem drinking during adolescence.
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Problem drinking during the college years is a significant public health concern. The goal of the current review was to examine the primary psychosocial factors that predict problem drinking in college students. Variables examined included demographic variables, personality, drinking history, alcohol expectancies, drinking motives, stress and coping, activity involvement, and peer and family influence. Evidence from studies of college drinking indicated that the variables associated with college drinking seem to vary at levels dealing with one's personality and coping mechanisms, one's thought processes about drinking, and the environment. It seems that expectancies and drinking motives may serve as explanations for the pathways from certain personality types (i.e., sensation seeking and neurotic) to problem drinking in the college setting. Factors that predicted future drinking problems after college were also examined. Overall, it seems that interventions and prevention programs would need to reach college students at all three levels--the environment, individual personality traits, and cognitive processes. Future research should address the limitations in the previous research as well as test comprehensive models of college drinking.
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A growing literature suggests a significant relationship between “anxiety sensitivity” (AS; fear of anxiety symptoms) and alcohol use/abuse. The present study examined the relationship between levels of AS and self-reported rates of weekly alcohol consumption and frequency of “excessive drinking” (i.e., number of times legally intoxicated per year). Subjects were 30 nonalcoholic university women, divided into three AS groups (high, moderate, and low) based upon scores on the Anxiety Sensitivity Index (ASI). High AS women reported consuming significantly more alcoholic beverages on a weekly basis and drinking to excess more times per year than low AS controls. ASI scores were found to be significantly positively correlated with both measures of self-reported alcohol consumption. The results support the hypothesis of a positive relationship between AS levels in young adult women and extent of excessive alcohol use.
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Increasing interest in the relation between emotion and cognition has led to the development of a range of laboratory methods for inducing temporary mood states. Sixteen such techniques are reviewed and compared on a range of factors including success rate, the possibility of demand effects, the intensity of the induced mood, and the range of different moods that can be induced. Three different cognitive models (self-schema theory, semantic network theory, and fragmentation theory) which have been successfully used to describe long-term mood states, such as clinical depression, are elaborated to describe the process of temporary mood induction. Finally, the use of mood induction is contrasted with alternative methods (such as the study of patients suffering from depression) for investigating emotion.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--George Peabody College for Teachers, 1933.
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This study aims at testing for the effectivity of Velten MIP and Musical MIP and comparing both in a direct way both at a group level and individually using (substantial) mood changes. Moreover, effects of mood changes on changes in thought association judgements are tested (accessibility of cognitions). One-hundred-and-eighty-four students of two departments of a College for Higher Vocational Education, at random assigned to two experiments (Velten MIP and Musical MIP, n = 92 for each experiment) participated in the study, held at the college. In each experiment four mood induction condition groups were employed: anxious, depressive, elated or neutral. In each condition mood induction (the independent variable) was preceded and followed by a thought association task, i.e. reactions of Ss in addition to allegedly neutral stimulus words of two word lists: List A and List B. Of each condition, approximately half of the Ss (11 or 12) received the word lists in the order A-B, the other half receiving the word lists in reverse order. Thought association tasks and MIP were interspersed by mood ratings, using Visual Analogue Scales (VASs: anxious, depressive, elated and hostile). At the end of the experiment, Ss judged their thought associations for feeling tone (anxious, depressive, elated and hostile) using VAS-like rating scales. The difference between feeling tone judgements of the second and first thought association tasks operated as the dependent variable. As for the effectivity of mood manipulation, results partially supported the hypothesized superiority of Musical MIP as against the Velten MIP, i.e. the former—both at the group and at an individual level—presenting stronger results; however, a direct comparison between two MIPs failed to substantiate this. Sex was shown to play a major role in inducing mood, namely more women than men were susceptible to mood influences. Impact of personality characteristics on mood changes, on the other hand, was generally absent. Personality factors were also shown hardly to have influenced changes of judgement of feeling tones in addition to thought associations. In this context presentation of word lists (A-B or B-A) were shown to be the pertinent factor, due to stimulus words' characteristics. Thus, contrary to what was presumed, mood changes filled a negligible part. Discussion of results leads one to conclude that one needs different stimulus words, i.e. words that lack fixed connotations that preclude any mood influence surviving. Suggestions are made for developing future research designed to shed some more light on the emotion-cognition issue, which topic is believed to be of outstanding relevance for grounding scientifically intervention procedures which are in use in clinical practice.
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In this commentary, the three principal investigators of the Relapse Replication and Extension Project (RREP) reflect on clinical and research implications of study findings from the three collaborating sites. A primary purpose of RREP was to study the reliability and validity of a taxonomy of relapse antecedents originally proposed by Marlatt two decades ago. Under the best of research conditions, with extensive training and practice, it was difficult to achieve reliability of coding with the original three-level system, although with only two levels of classification more reasonable albeit variable reliability was found. Modifications may improve the taxonomy's reliability, but RREP data indicate that a more appropriate strategy is to measure possible antecedents of relapse by continuous scales such as those provided by Annis, Heather and Litman. There is reasonably consistent evidence for two common antecedents of relapse: negative emotional states, and positive emotional states in a social context. Antecedents of relapse show only modest consistency within individuals from one occasion to the next. The causes to which clients attribute relapses may exert a significant effect on future drinking episodes. Stable and internal attributions, such as are commonly associated with a dispositional disease model, may serve to perpetuate relapse. From the RREP studies, the availability of coping skills appears to be a potent protective factor, and ineffective coping a consistent predictor of relapse. Implications for clinical research and practice are considered.
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This article presents the proceedings of a symposium at the 2001 RSA Meeting in Montreal, Canada organized by Reinout W. Wiers and Alan W. Stacy. The purpose of the symposium was to present recent applications of implicit cognitive processing theory to alcohol research. Basic cognitive research has demonstrated that implicit cognition influences memory and behavior without explicit recall or introspection. The presentations from this symposium show that implicit cognition approaches yield new insights into understanding drinking motivation. The presentations were: (1) An introduction by Alan W. Stacy; (2) Implicit cognition and alcohol use. Involvement of other variables? (Susan L. Ames); (3) Alcohol expectancies and the art of implicit priming (Jane A. Noll); (4) Parental alcoholism and the effects of alcohol on semantic priming (Michael A. Sayette); (5) Implicit arousal and explicit liking of alcohol in heavy drinkers (Reinout W. Wiers); and (6) Negative affective cues and associative cognition in problem drinkers (Martin Zack). Comments were provided by the discussant Marvin Krank. The presented studies demonstrated that: (1) implicit memories of alcohol associations are powerful predictors and cross-sectional correlates of alcohol use; (2) implicit retrieval processes influence alcohol outcome expectancies and alcohol consumption; (3) alcohol consumption influences implicit memory processing; (4) heavy drinkers reveal different affective responses in implicit and explicit tasks; and (5) negative affect exerts an implicit priming effect for alcohol associations in problem drinkers. These findings illustrate the importance of implicit cognition in understanding alcohol abuse and demonstrate the potential of the theoretical framework for more widespread application across a variety of areas of alcohol research, including diagnostics for the risk of alcohol abuse, treatment, and prevention.
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To test whether an expectancy challenge (EC) changes implicit and explicit alcohol-related cognitions and binge drinking in young heavy drinkers. This is important for theoretical and practical reasons: the EC presents a critical test for the hypothesized mediational role of alcohol cognitions and the EC has been presented as a promising intervention to counter alcohol problems in heavy drinking youth. SETTING, PARTICIPANTS AND INTERVENTION: Ninety-two heavy drinking college and university students (half women) were assigned randomly to the EC or control condition (a sham alcohol experiment in the same bar-laboratory). Explicit alcohol cognitions and alcohol use were assessed with paper-and-pencil measures. Alcohol use was assessed prior to the experiment and during a 1-month follow-up. Implicit alcohol-related cognitions were assessed with two versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT), adapted to assess implicit valence and arousal associations with alcohol. The EC resulted in decreased explicit positive arousal expectancies in men and women alike. There was some evidence for a differential reduction in implicit arousal associations, but findings depended on the version of the IAT and on the scoring-algorithm used. In men (but not in women) there was a short-lived differential reduction in prospective alcohol use (significant in week 3 of the follow-up), and this reduction was partially mediated by the decrease in explicit positive arousal expectancies. These findings suggest that an EC successfully changes explicit alcohol cognitions and that this may have short-lived beneficial effects in heavy drinking young men.
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In two experiments, we investigated whether different mood states activate specific types of implicit alcohol cognition among undergraduates classified as enhancement (EM) or coping (CM) motivated drinkers. Participants completed a Stroop task in Experiment 1 (n=81), and an Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST; [De Houwer, J. (2003). The Extrinsic Affective Simon Task. Experimental Psychology, 50, 77-85.]) in Experiment 2 (n=79) following random assignment to listen to positive or negative musical mood induction procedures (MMIP). Consistent with hypotheses, only EM, and not CM, drinkers displayed an activation of implicit attention to alcohol cues (Experiment 1) and reward-alcohol implicit associations (Experiment 2) following exposure to positive MMIP. Contrary to hypotheses for CM drinkers, none of the groups, in either experiment, showed an activation of implicit alcohol processing following exposure to negative MMIP. Confidence that positive mood activates implicit alcohol cognition among EM drinkers is increased since this result emerged across two studies involving quite different methodologies. This research has implications for experimental cognitive research and it highlights the potential utility of treatment matching according to drinking motives (e.g., EM) to improve clinical outcomes.
Vulnerability and changes in dysfunctional attitudes following a mood induction
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Do anxiety sensitive students drink to cope with anxiety or depression?
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