Antonio Verdejo-García’s research while affiliated with Monash University (Australia) and other places


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Publications (275)


The difference between the perceived importance of testing after versus before the interaction with Cory COVID-Bot (y-axis), in the compassion, exponential growth, and control conditions (x-axis). Error bars are 95% CIs, violin plots represent datapoints
Cory COVID-Bot’s avatar is a friendly middle-aged librarian
Participants’ responses on the DBCI Engagement Scale. All questions were coded between 1 and 7, error bars are standard deviations
Participants reported likelihood of getting tested if they were to experience symptoms. The bars represent the percentage of the total answers in that group
Certainty on whether it is alright to go out in various risk contexts; -50 represents “Completely certain it’s not alright to go out”, and 50 represents “Completely certain it is alright to go out”. The green area shows the density of responses before the chatbot test, while the blue area represents the responses after the chatbot test
Testing behaviour change with an artificial intelligence chatbot in a randomized controlled study
  • Article
  • Full-text available

July 2024

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79 Reads

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1 Citation

Journal of Public Health Policy

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Suong T. T. Le

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Chatbots can effect large-scale behaviour change because they are accessible through social media, flexible, scalable, and gather data automatically. Yet research on the feasibility and effectiveness of chatbot-administered behaviour change interventions is sparse. The effectiveness of established behaviour change interventions when implemented in chatbots is not guaranteed, given the unique human–machine interaction dynamics. We pilot-tested chatbot-based behaviour change through information provision and embedded animations. We evaluated whether the chatbot could increase understanding and intentions to adopt protective behaviours during the pandemic. Fifty-nine culturally and linguistically diverse participants received a compassion intervention, an exponential growth intervention, or no intervention. We measured participants’ COVID-19 testing intentions and measured their staying-home attitudes before and after their chatbot interaction. We found reduced uncertainty about protective behaviours. The exponential growth intervention increased participants’ testing intentions. This study provides preliminary evidence that chatbots can spark behaviour change, with applications in diverse and underrepresented groups. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1057/s41271-024-00500-6.

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Chemical cousins with contrasting behavioural profiles: MDMA users and methamphetamine users differ in social-cognitive functions and aggression

April 2024

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118 Reads

European Neuropsychopharmacology

Methamphetamine (METH, “Crystal Meth”) and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA, “Ecstasy”) share structural-chemical similarities but have distinct psychotropic profiles due to specific neurochemical actions. Previous research has suggested that their impact on social cognitive functions and social behaviour may differ significantly, however, direct comparisons of METH and MDMA users regarding social cognition and interaction are lacking. Performances in cognitive and emotional empathy (Multifaceted Empathy Test) and emotion sensitivity (Face Morphing Task), as well as aggressive social behaviour (Competitive Reaction Time Task) were assessed in samples of n=40 chronic METH users, n=39 chronic MDMA users and n=86 stimulant-naïve controls (total N=165). Self-reports and hair samples were used to obtain subjective and objective estimates of substance use patterns. METH users displayed diminished cognitive and emotional empathy towards positive stimuli, elevated punitive social behaviour regardless of provocation, and self-reported heightened trait anger relative to controls. MDMA users diverged from the control group only by exhibiting a distinct rise in punitive behaviour when faced with provocation. Correlation analyses indicated that both higher hair concentrations of MDMA and METH may be associated with reduced cognitive empathy. Moreover, greater lifetime MDMA use correlated with increased punitive behaviour among MDMA users. Our findings confirm elevated aggression and empathy deficits in chronic METH users, while chronic MDMA users only displayed more impulsive aggression. Dose-response correlations indicate that some of these deficits might be a consequence of use. Specifically, the dopaminergic mechanism of METH might be responsible for social-cognitive deficits.




O012 The Impact of Sleep Restriction on Reward learning in Healthy Adults

October 2023

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26 Reads

SLEEP Advances

Sleep disruption can lead to enhanced reactivity towards pleasurable stimuli and impaired discrimination between rewarding and punishing cues. Thus, sleep may play a mechanistic role in the development and exacerbation of pathological reward-related behaviours (e.g., gambling, substance use, etc.). The study aimed to explore the impact of sleep restriction on reward processing. Involving a 7-night at-home sleep monitoring protocol, participants were randomly assigned an experimental condition: sleep restriction (5-hr time in bed/night; SR) or well-rested (9-hr/night; WR). Adherence to the prescribed sleep schedules was assessed daily. On the eighth day participants completed a battery of reward- learning tasks, 2-hrs post-habitual wake. Participants were healthy adults (n = 45, mean age = 25.4 yrs, 64% female). Total sleep time for the SR group (n = 18) was 297.4 mins, whilst the WR was 485.8 mins (n = 27). For the probabilistic reward task, response bias (RB) did not significantly differ between the SR and WR groups during the overall task (p = 0.28), or during blocks one (p = 0.26) or two (p = 0.90). However, at block three, the SR group showed higher RB as compared to the WR group (p = 0.03), indicating SR participants exhibited a systematic preference for the frequently rewarded cues, relative to the WR group. These preliminary results suggest initial reward responsiveness is not impacted by SR, but over time SR may produce heightened sensitivity to rewarding cues. This may indicate a role for sleep disruption in the maintenance of maladaptive appetitive behaviours.




O060 The relationship between sleep and appetitive conditioning: A systematic review and meta-analysis

November 2022

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44 Reads

SLEEP Advances

Appetitive conditioning involves learning to associate previously neutral stimuli with pleasant or rewarding cues. Elements of appetitive conditioning underpin various maladaptive consummatory behaviours, including regular consumption of unhealthy foods, recreational substance use, and clinical symptoms of certain mental disorders (e.g., binge-eating disorder, substance use disorder). One modifiable mechanism underlying appetitive conditioning appears to be sleep, due to its critical role in new learning. This systematic review and meta-analysis (PROSPERO registration: CRD42021234793) examined the relationship between sleep and appetitive conditioning. Inclusion criteria included: a) appetitive conditioning paradigm; b) measure of conditioning; c) sleep measurement and/or sleep loss; and d) written in English. Searches of seven databases returned 3343 publications as of March 2022. The final sample consisted of 40 studies using animal models. No human studies were identified. We found: a) sleep loss interfered with appetitive conditioning tasks involving natural reinforcers (i.e., food; p < 0.001); b) tasks involving drug reinforcers showed potentiating effects of sleep loss (p < 0.001); c) extinction learning was negatively impacted by sleep loss, irrespective of reinforcer; and d) post-learning sleep was associated with increases in REM sleep (p = 0.02). Findings suggest sleep loss potentiates the impact of psychoactive substances to produce an increased risk of problematic substance use. This indicates sleep may be an important target in treating substance use disorders. In obese/overweight populations sleep loss may be associated with deficits in the conditioning and extinction of reward behaviours. Further research is needed to assess the relationship between sleep and appetitive conditioning in humans.


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Citations (78)


... Existing chatbot evaluations have largely focused on their acceptability to users and whether they successfully delivered the intended service within the chatbot itself, such as booking an appointment or administering a questionnaire [19][20][21][22][23][24][25] . Chatbots that try to encourage behaviour change have mostly been evaluated by measuring self-reported outcomes such as behavioural intentions and attitudes [26][27][28][29] . This includes one study in a laboratory setting showing that information provision in a chatbot may increase the self-reported intention to receive the COVID-19 vaccine 30 . ...

Reference:

A behaviourally informed chatbot increases vaccination rates in Argentina more than a one-way reminder
Testing behaviour change with an artificial intelligence chatbot in a randomized controlled study

Journal of Public Health Policy

... The quartiles of daily food intake were used as exogenous variables. The optimal number of latent profiles was determined comprehensively by evaluating the goodness of fit of each model according to Akaike Information Criteria (AIC), Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), and adjusted BIC (aBIC), as well as Entropy, Bootstrap Likelihood Ratio test (BLRT), and Lo-Mendell-Rubin likelihood ratio test (LMR) (25). Lower statistical values of AIC, BIC, and aBIC indicated a better fit. ...

Identifying internalizing transdiagnostic profiles through motivational and cognitive control systems: Relations with symptoms, functionality, and quality of life

Comprehensive Psychiatry

... Furthermore, the risk of malingering in criminals and radicalized people has been highlighted in order to obtain legal benefits [27]. It is therefore relevant to identify the specific clinical features separating radical ideologies from delusional thoughts [28][29][30][31][32][33]. ...

Searching for biomarkers in the fluidity of mental ill-health
  • Citing Article
  • June 2023

World psychiatry: official journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA)

... Although this study was preregistered to focus on positive and negative valence, the additional RDoC domains of social systems and cognitive systems emerged as relevant. Systems for social processes include social communication and perception, and theory of mind and empathy (Hanegraaf et al., 2021). Sibling responses indicated the impact of unique family experiences on social development, personal values, and relationships, as well as how empathy and understanding influenced their coping and resilience. ...

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of ‘Systems for Social Processes’ in Borderline Personality and Substance Use Disorders
  • Citing Article
  • April 2021

Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

... Another salient aspect to underline concerns emotional dysregulation, which plays a fundamental role in the predisposition to SUD as well as in the maintenance of the disorder and the recovery of global functioning even after remission [16,18,45]. To illustrate, neuroimaging studies [15,46] corroborated that a marked alteration of recognition and management of emotions favored the dual diagnosis (cocaine addiction and Cluster B PD). ...

Do comorbid personality disorders in cocaine dependence exacerbate neuroanatomical alterations? A structural neuroimaging study
  • Citing Article
  • March 2021

Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry

... However, cognitive training is infrequently reported in programs in alcohol use disorder (Nixon & Lewis, 2019). Most studies report direct neuropsychological outcomes, while others have shown parallel improvements on other outcomes, i.e. well-being and craving (Anderson, Youssef, Robinson, Lubman, & Verdejo-Garcia, 2021). Interestingly, several studies have demonstrated the possibility of generalization of skills trained by cognitive rehabilitation programs, leading to pragmatic recommendations to focus on deficits related to relapse in substance use disorders (Maurage, Rolland, Pitel, & D'Hondt, 2024). ...

Cognitive boosting interventions for impulsivity in addiction: A systematic review and meta‐analysis of cognitive training, remediation and pharmacological enhancement
  • Citing Article
  • March 2021

Addiction

... For this purpose, light-touch gamification is frequently used to sustain engagement with the task over time while keeping the experimental control as high as possible. 1 Light-touch gamification in the Additionally, due to the relation of avoidance motivation and inhibitory control, we expected that in line with the devaluation by inhibition hypothesis, participants will be faster to inhibit their response when an avoidance motivation is induced, when compared to an induced approach motivation as indicated by a lower SSRT [32]. 2 Further, based on earlier studies in which immersion has shown to enhance action control, we hypothesise that a deeper level of immersion will predict a faster SSRT [33,34]. Next to that, previous literature has shown that a greater avatar identification can enhance performance [11,13]. ...

Brain Training with the Body in Mind: Towards Gamified Approach-Avoidance Training using Virtual Reality
  • Citing Article
  • March 2021

International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

... A recent study suggests that addictive processes may contribute to binge eating in women (Levallius et al., 2022). These processes of addictive eating can be understood from two perspectives: the involvement of reward systems associated with appetitive motivation (biological processes) and the decision-making systems that control food intake choices (behavioural processes; Burnatowska et al., 2023;Ho & Verdejo-Garcia, 2021;Levallius et al., 2022). Moreover, this dimension underscores the impact of the interpersonal environment. ...

Interactive influences of food, contexts and neurocognitive systems on addictive eating
  • Citing Article
  • February 2021

Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry

... The behavioural analysis showed that increased switching after reward improved over time in the group with MUD. While earlier studies have identified that decision-making can improve over time during early recovery from MUD,22,48 ours is the first to provide a specific behavioural outcome that can explain why this is occurring (i.e., greater use of rewarding feedback to guide next choice). This finding has clinical significance as it highlights that while learning adaptive rewardrelated responses can be challenging for people with MUD (e.g., attending therapy, forming new social relationships), this deficit can improve. ...

Lack of longitudinal changes in cognition in individuals with methamphetamine use disorder during the first 6 weeks after commencing treatment
  • Citing Article
  • February 2021

... Estos resultados concuerdan con los obtenidos por Barrero-Ortiz et al. (2021) y Hyung-Chul et al. (2020 quienes demostraron un incremento mayor en el rendimiento de las capacidades físicas por la incidencia de la música tras un programa de intervención en adolescentes. En cuanto al sexo, las chicas de ambos grupos muestran niveles en todas las pruebas inferiores respecto a los chicos en el pretest, tendencia que mantienen tras el programa de intervención, resultados confirmados en estudios tanto transversales como longitudinales que indican niveles superiores en los varones en comparación con las mujeres (López et al., 2021;Moral-García et al., 2020;Vernetta et al., 2023) Por otro lado es de destacar que el programa de CF con música influye positivamente en las chicas de forma prioritaria, ya que los niveles de mejoras en todas las pruebas son superiores tras la intervención con diferencias significativas excepto en la dinamometría manual. En cambio, en las chicas sin música, solo existió diferencias a favor de la prueba de velocidad. ...

Efecto del incremento de la actividad física sobre la condición física en un grupo de adolescentes con sobrepeso y/u obesidad

SPORT TK-Revista EuroAmericana de Ciencias del Deporte