Cannabis demand is sensitive to next-day responsibilities, such as job interviews; however, it is unclear how demand is affected by non-work-related responsibilities and how reported compatibility of cannabis use (i.e., how suitable one perceives cannabis use to be in a situation) influences demand.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: Previous neuroimaging research in alcohol use disorder (AUD) has found altered functional connectivity in the brain's salience, default mode, and central executive (CEN) networks (i.e. the triple network model), though their specific associations with AUD severity and heavy drinking remains unclear.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlcohol use disorder is associated with overvaluation of alcohol relative to other rewards, in part due to dynamic increases in value in response to alcohol-related cues. In a neuroeconomic framework, alcohol cues increase behavioral economic demand for alcohol, but the neural correlates these cue effects are unknown. This functional magnetic resonance imaging study combined a neuroeconomic alcohol purchase task with an alcohol cue exposure in 72 heavy drinkers with established sensitivity to alcohol cues (51 % female; mean age=33.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Can Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry
March 2024
Background And Aims: Behavioral economic theory predicts that high alcohol demand and high proportionate alcohol-related reinforcement are important determinants of risky alcohol use in emerging adults, but the majority of research to date has been cross-sectional in nature. The present study investigated prospective and dynamic relationships between alcohol demand and proportionate alcohol-related reinforcement in relation to heavy drinking days and alcohol problems.
Design: Longitudinal cohort with assessments every 4 months for 20 months.
Subst Use Addctn J
January 2024
Background: This study examined the risk perceptions related to driving after cannabis use (DACU) among Canadian and US adults who used cannabis in the past six months.
Methods: Perceptions of danger, normative beliefs, perceived likelihood of negative consequences, and other driving-related variables were collected via online surveys in Canadian (n = 158; 50.0% female, 84.
Alcohol Clin Exp Res (Hoboken)
November 2023
Background: Behavioral economic research has revealed significant increases in alcohol demand following exposure to alcohol-related cues. Prior research has focused exclusively on nontreatment-seeking heavy drinkers, included only male participants, or used heterogeneous methods. The current studies sought to replicate and extend existing findings in treatment-seeking and nontreatment-seeking heavy drinkers while also examining sex effects and moderation by alcohol use disorder (AUD) severity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBehavioral economic frameworks emphasize the importance of contextual influences on alcohol use; therefore, identifying relative demand for alcohol versus other commodities is of importance. Cross-commodity purchase tasks allow participants to make choices across multiple concurrently available commodities and can thereby pinpoint interactions among those commodities. These tasks may help identify relevant substance-free alternative activities to target in alcohol treatment by determining whether the activity functions as a substitute for alcohol use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: Given the expanding legal cannabis market in the U.S., it is vital to understand how context impacts cannabis use.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Research reports a robust association between combustible cigarette use and alcohol use frequency and severity. Extension to the emerging landscape of electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) use is needed to inform prevention and treatment strategies.
Method: We evaluated data from the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH).
Objective: Population drinking trends show clear developmental periodicity, with steep increases in harmful alcohol use from ages 18 to 22 followed by a gradual decline across the 20s, albeit with persistent problematic use in a subgroup of individuals. Cross-sectional studies implicate behavioral economic indicators of alcohol overvaluation (high alcohol demand) and lack of alternative substance-free reinforcers (high proportionate alcohol-related reinforcement) as potential predictors of change during this developmental window, but longitudinal evidence is sparse.
Method: Using a sample of emerging adults ( = 497, = 22.
Addict Res Theory
October 2022
Individuals with alcohol use disorder may excessively value alcohol reinforcement over other types of rewards and may seek out environments supportive of alcohol consumption despite negative consequences. Therefore, examining ways to increase engagement in substance-free activities may be useful in treating alcohol use disorder. Past research has focused on preference and frequency of engagement in alcohol-related versus alcohol-free activities.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis review sought to synthesize the literature on the reliability and validity of behavioral-economic measures of demand and discounting in human research, introduce behavioral-economic research methodologies for studying addictive behaviors, discuss gaps in the current literature, and review areas for future research. A total of 34 studies was included in this review. The discounting literature showed similar responding regardless of whether hypothetical or actual outcomes were used, though people tended to discount the outcome presented first more steeply, suggesting order effects.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDelayed reward discounting (DRD) refers to the extent to which an individual devalues a reward based on its delay in time and has been linked to a wide variety of health behaviors. Because it is commonly measured using monetary rewards, income is typically used as a covariate to adjust for a person's socioeconomic status. Standard financial income measures have several limitations, such as not incorporating pertinent considerations like cost of living or number of financial dependents.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLarge proportions of smokers are unsuccessful in evidence-based smoking cessation treatment and identifying prognostic predictors may inform improvements in treatment. Steep discounting of delayed rewards (delay discounting) is a robust predictor of poor smoking cessation outcome, but the underlying neural predictors have not been investigated. Forty-one treatment-seeking adult smokers completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) delay discounting paradigm prior to initiating a 9-week smoking cessation treatment protocol.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: While substance use and mental health symptoms commonly co-occur among adolescents, few population-level studies have examined profiles of co-occurrence to inform tailored prevention and early interventions.
Methods: A multilevel latent profile analysis was conducted on a representative sample of 11,994 students in 68 secondary schools to: 1) identify distinct profiles of co-occurring substance use and mental health symptoms; 2) identify types of schools based on student profiles; and 3) explore school correlates of student profiles and school types, including school climate, belonging, and safety.
Results: Five student profiles and three school types were identified.
While several studies have examined how class time and internship responsibilities impact demand for alcohol in undergraduate samples, no study has examined this question using more universally applicable responsibilities with a sample of community adults. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the impact of a range of next-day responsibilities on demand for alcohol among a crowdsourced sample of community adults using a hypothetical alcohol purchase task (APT). Community adults ( = 261; 79% White; 60% identified as men; 39% identified as women; and 1% identified as nonbinary) with a mean age of 38.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: Inpatient treatment programs for substance use disorders (SUDs) typically have an abstinence policy for patients, but unsanctioned substance use nonetheless takes place and can have significant negative clinical impacts. The current study sought to understand this problem from a patient perspective and to develop strategies for improved contraband substance management in an inpatient concurrent disorders sample.
Methods: First, a qualitative study ( = 10; 60% female) was undertaken to ascertain perceived prevalence, impact, and patient-generated strategies.
Introduction: Disruption of cortical gray matter and white matter tracts are well-established markers of alcohol use disorder (AUD), but less is known about whether similar differences are present in intracortical myelin (ICM, i.e., highly myelinated gray matter in deeper cortical layers).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn behavioral economics, income shock manipulations (hypothetical narratives where money is gained or lost) can provide meaningful insight into decision-making related to primary and secondary commodities. To date, few studies have examined the impact of income shock on delay discounting in healthy controls and individuals using substances, and no study to date has examined the impact of income shock on alcohol demand. This study examined the effects of income shock on behavioral economic assessments (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExp Clin Psychopharmacol
August 2022
Crowdsourcing platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, Prolific, and Qualtrics Panels have become a dominant form of sampling in recent years. Crowdsourcing enables researchers to effectively and efficiently sample research participants with greater geographic variability, access to hard-to-reach populations, and reduced costs. These methods have been increasingly used across varied areas of psychological science and essential for research during the COVID-19 pandemic due to their facilitation of remote research.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPsychol Addict Behav
February 2023
Objective: In the context of behavioral economics, drug use is a choice to which an individual may allocate responding despite the presence of alternative response possibilities. To examine the demand for a drug in an environment in which other drugs or nondrug alternatives are present, researchers often use a cross-commodity purchase task. These tasks allow participants to make choices across several reinforcers at varied unit prices and may elucidate behavioral economic patterns of substitutability and complementarity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDelayed reward discounting (DRD) is a form of decision-making reflecting valuation of smaller immediate rewards versus larger delayed rewards, and high DRD has been linked to several health behaviors, including substance use disorders, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and obesity. Elucidating the underlying neuroanatomical factors may offer important insights into the etiology of these conditions. We used structural MRI scans of 1038 Human Connectome Project participants (M = 28.
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