Expressive Writing About One's Trauma Increases Accessibility of Cannabis Information in Memory Among Trauma-Exposed Individuals.

Objective: Trauma survivors are more likely than others to use cannabis, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) commonly co-occurs with cannabis use disorder (CUD). Automatic memory associations between trauma reminders and cannabis use have been suggested as contributing mechanisms. These associations can be studied experimentally by manipulating trauma cue exposure in a cue-reactivity paradigm (CRP) and examining effects on the accessibility of cannabis information in memory in trauma survivors with and without PTSD.

Do anxiety symptoms and coping motives serially mediate the association between psychotic-like experiences and cannabis-related problems in undergraduate recent cannabis users?

Many Canadian emerging adults (ages 18-25 years) use cannabis, with 60 % of past-three-month users experiencing one or more cannabis-related problems (i.e., adverse consequences of use).

Cognitions mediate the influence of personality on adolescent cannabis use initiation.

Aims: Much research indicates that an individual's personality impacts the initiation and escalation of substance use and problems in youth. The acquired-preparedness model suggests that personality influences substance use by modifying learning about substances, which then affects substance use. The current study used longitudinal data to test whether automatic cannabis-related cognitions (memory associations and outcome expectancy liking) mediate the relationship between four personality traits with later cannabis use.

Automatic cognitions as mediators of parental influence on adolescent cannabis use.

Aims: Multiple social influences affect cannabis use in adolescents, including parental and peer cannabis use norms. However, the mechanisms of influence underlying these social influences remain unclear. Recent studies have suggested that cognitions about cannabis use and the effects of cannabis may mediate social influences.

Childhood Maltreatment and Development of Substance Use Disorders: A Review and a Model of Cognitive Pathways.

Exposure to childhood maltreatment (CM) is associated with increased risk for developing substance use disorders (SUDs). CM exerts negative effects on cognitive abilities including intellectual performance, memory, attention, and executive function. Parallel cognitive impairments have been observed in SUDs.

Shifting patterns of variance in adolescent alcohol use: Testing consumption as a developing trait-state.

While average rates of change in adolescent alcohol consumption are frequently studied, variability arising from situational and dispositional influences on alcohol use has been comparatively neglected. We used variance decomposition to test differences in variability resulting from year-to-year fluctuations in use (i.e.

Outcome expectancy liking: a self-generated, self-coded measure predicts adolescent substance use trajectories.

This study tested the predictive validity of a novel, brief, and easy-to-use self-report measure of expectancies and their subjective values for alcohol and marijuana use. Canadian students in Grades 7 to 11 were administered paper-and-pencil questionnaires once per year for 3 consecutive years (Krank et al., 2011).

Self-coded indirect memory associations and alcohol and marijuana use in college students.

Indirect memory associations for substance use predict both the concurrent and prospective levels of substance use. These methods assess spontaneous, possibly implicit, and easily accessible associations that predict substance use over direct (explicit) methods of assessment (e.g.

Paradoxical effects of alcohol information on alcohol outcome expectancies.

Background: Cognitive associations with alcohol predict both current and future use in youth and young adults. Much cognitive and social cognitive research suggests that exposure to information may have unconscious influences on thinking and behavior. The present study assessed the impact of information statements on the accessibility of alcohol outcome expectancies.

Self-coded indirect memory associations in a brief school-based intervention for substance use suspensions.

This study assessed the concurrent validity of self-generated and self-coded substance use associations for marijuana and alcohol use. Grades seven to twelve students were assessed as part of a brief intervention program in lieu of suspension for substance use infractions in school. During the cognitive assessment, students generated memory associations to probes for high-risk situations and desirable outcomes.

Goal- and signal-directed incentive: conditioned approach, seeking, and consumption established with unsweetened alcohol in rats.

Rationale: Many theories of addictive behavior propose that cues signaling drug administration influence the likelihood of drug-taking and drug-seeking behavior.

Objectives: We investigated the behavioral impact of cues associated with unsweetened ethanol and their interaction with responding maintained by ethanol self-administration. Our goal was to establish the influence of such cues on ethanol seeking.

Pavlovian conditioning with ethanol: sign-tracking (autoshaping), conditioned incentive, and ethanol self-administration.

Background: Conditioned incentive theories of addictive behavior propose that cues signaling a drug's reinforcing effects activate a central motivational state. Incentive motivation enhances drug-taking and drug-seeking behavior. We investigated the behavioral response to cues associated with ethanol and their interaction with operant self-administration of ethanol.

Environmental context conditioning with ethanol reduces the aversive effects of ethanol in the acquisition of self-administration in rats.

Rationale: Many recent theoretical approaches to drug-taking behavior feature a role for Pavlovian conditioning. Despite growing evidence for that role, the particular contributions of Pavlovian conditioning to self-administration are not clear. For example, few studies have addressed the effects of Pavlovian conditioning on the acquisition of self-administration.