The effect of impulsivity and drinking motives on alcohol outcomes in college students: a 3-year longitudinal analysis.

Substance use is a public health concern and cross-sectional studies have found that impulsivity and drinking motives influence substance use in emerging adults. Despite these findings, longitudinal studies with nuanced measures of impulsivity and drinking motives are needed. The current study investigated the three-year relationship between impulsivity-related traits, drinking motives, sex, and drinking outcomes in a sample of 509 college students (47.

Heavy, Problematic College Drinking Predicts Increases in Impulsivity.

Objective: Impulsigenic personality traits are among the many factors demonstrated to predict drinking behavior among late adolescents. The current study tested the opposite possibility, that during the emerging adulthood developmental period, problematic drinking behavior predicts increases in impulsigenic traits. This possibility is important because such traits increase risk for multiple forms of dysfunction.

Bidirectional Relations of Impulsive Personality and Alcohol Use Across Three Waves of Data Collection.

Objective: To explore the bidirectional relations between alcohol use and three impulsive personality traits, to advance understanding of risk processes.

Participants: 525 college students (mean age = 18.95 years) recruited in August 2008 and 2009 and followed up annually for three years.

Neural mechanisms of the rejection-aggression link.

Social rejection is a painful event that often increases aggression. However, the neural mechanisms of this rejection-aggression link remain unclear. A potential clue may be that rejected people often recruit the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex's (VLPFC) self-regulatory processes to manage the pain of rejection.

Forming first impressions of children: the role of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms and emotion dysregulation.

Background: Previous research on peer status of children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) has focused on already-established peer groups, rendering the specific social behaviors that influence peers' initial impressions largely unknown. Recently, theorists have argued that emotion dysregulation is a key aspect of ADHD, with empirical work finding relations between emotion dysregulation and social outcomes. Therefore, the current study focuses on the initial interactions among children varying in ADHD symptoms duringh a novel playgroup, proposing that emotion dysregulation displayed during the playgroup may serve as a possible pathway between ADHD symptoms and peers' initial negative impressions.

Physical aggressiveness and gray matter deficits in ventromedial prefrontal cortex.

What causes individuals to hurt others? Since the famous case of Phineas Gage, lesions of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) have been reliably linked to physically aggressive behavior. However, it is unclear whether naturally-occurring deficits in VMPFC, among normal individuals, might have widespread consequences for aggression. Using voxel based morphometry, we regressed gray matter density from the brains of 138 normal female and male adults onto their dispositional levels of physical aggression, verbal aggression, and sex, simultaneously.

Longitudinal and reciprocal relations between delay discounting and crime.

Theorists argue that self-control failure is the underlying cause of criminal behavior, with previous research linking poor self-control to delinquency and drug use. The path from self-control to crime is well-established, but less is known about whether criminal behavior contributes to self-control deficits over time. We investigated bi-directional relations between self-control assessed via a delay discounting task and self-reported crime over a three-year period.

Cross-lagged relations between motives and substance use: Can use strengthen your motivation over time?

Motives for substance use have garnered considerable attention due to the strong predictive utility of this construct, both in terms of use and problems associated with use. The current study examined the cross-lagged relations between alcohol use and motives, and marijuana use and motives over three yearly assessment periods in a large sample (N=526, 48% male) of college students. The relations between substance use and motives were assessed at each time point, allowing for the examination of these inter-relations over time.

Rural and urban substance use differences: Effects of the transition to college.

Background: With approximately 20% of Americans residing in rural communities, substance use differences is an important topic for appropriate use of resources, policy decisions, and the development of prevention and intervention programs.

Objectives: The current study examined differences in alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use among students from rural and urban backgrounds across the transition to college.

Methods: Participants were 431 (48% male) undergraduate students from a large, public southeastern university who provided yearly alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use data during freshman, sophomore, and junior years.

Social rejection magnifies impulsive behavior among individuals with greater negative urgency: An experimental test of urgency theory.

Impulsivity is a multifaceted trait with substantial implications for human well-being. One facet of impulsivity is negative urgency, the tendency to act impulsively in response to negative affect. Correlational evidence suggests that negative affect magnifies impulsive behavior among individuals with greater negative urgency, yet causal evidence for this core pillar of urgency theory is lacking.

Alcohol use and strenuous physical activity in college students: A longitudinal test of 2 explanatory models of health behavior.

Objective: To help clarify the effect of gender on the bidirectional relationship between alcohol use and strenuous physical activity in college students.

Participants: Five hundred twenty-four (52% female) college students recruited in August 2008 and 2009 and followed up in April 2009 and April 2011, respectively.

Methods: Participants reported their alcohol use and strenuous physical activity on 2 occasions (baseline and follow-up) spaced approximately 1 or 2 years apart.

Substance Use Trajectories From Early Adolescence Through the Transition to College.

Objective: The transition to college is an important developmental period for the development of alcohol, marijuana, and hard drug (cocaine, opiates, inhalants, stimulants, hallucinogens, Ecstasy, club drugs) use. The current study explored specific changes in substance use patterns during and after the transition to college through the use of trajectory analyses.

Method: Participants were 526 students who reported retrospectively and prospectively on their substance use from age 13 through the junior year of college.

Physiological response to reward and extinction predicts alcohol, marijuana, and cigarette use two years later.

Background: Physiological responses to reward and extinction are believed to represent the behavioral activation system (BAS) and behavioral inhibition system (BIS) constructs of Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory and underlie externalizing behaviors, including substance use. However, little research has examined these relations directly.

Methods: We assessed individuals' cardiac pre-ejection periods (PEP) and electrodermal responses (EDR) during reward and extinction trials through the "number elimination game" paradigm.

Craving versus control: Negative urgency and neural correlates of alcohol cue reactivity.

Background: Alcohol abuse is a common and costly practice. Individuals high in negative urgency, the tendency to act rashly when experiencing negative emotions, are at particular risk for abusing alcohol. Alcohol abuse among individuals high in negative urgency may be due to (a) increased activity in the brain's striatum, (b) decreased activity in brain regions associated with self-control, or (c) a combination of the two.

Impulsive Personality and Alcohol Use: Bidirectional Relations Over One Year.

Objective: Impulsive personality traits have been found to be robust predictors of substance use and problems in both cross-sectional and longitudinal research. Studies examining the relations of substance use and impulsive personality over time indicate a bidirectional relation, where substance use is also predictive of increases in later impulsive personality. The present study sought to build on these findings by examining the bidirectional relations among the different impulsive personality traits assessed by the UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale, with an interest in urgency (the tendency to act rashly when experiencing strong affect).

How do negative emotions impair self-control? A neural model of negative urgency.

Self-control often fails when people experience negative emotions. Negative urgency represents the dispositional tendency to experience such self-control failure in response to negative affect. Neither the neural underpinnings of negative urgency nor the more general phenomenon of self-control failure in response to negative emotions are fully understood.

Specific dimensions of impulsivity are differentially associated with daily and non-daily cigarette smoking in young adults.

Young adults are at risk for initiation of tobacco use and progression to tobacco dependence. Not every person who smokes cigarettes becomes tobacco dependent, however, and non-daily smoking is becoming more prevalent among those who use tobacco. It is likely that individual differences in psychosocial and behavioral factors influence risk for engaging in non-daily and daily cigarette smoking.

A Story Mapping Intervention to Improve Narrative Comprehension Deficits in Adolescents with ADHD.

The current study examined the effects of an 8-week Story Mapping Intervention (SMI) to improve narrative comprehension in adolescents with ADHD. Thirty 12 - 16 year-old adolescents with ADHD who were participating in a summer treatment program for adolescents with ADHD received the SMI instruction ten times and completed SMI homework ten times in a structured environment with teacher feedback. Recall of fables and story creation were assessed before and after the SMI.

Inference generation and story comprehension among children with ADHD.

Academic difficulties are well-documented among children with ADHD. Exploring these difficulties through story comprehension research has revealed deficits among children with ADHD in making causal connections between events and in using causal structure and thematic importance to guide recall of stories. Important to theories of story comprehension and implied in these deficits is the ability to make inferences.

Identifying the facets of impulsivity that explain the relation between ADHD symptoms and substance use in a nonclinical sample.

Adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are at higher risk to use substances than their nonclinical peers. Increased levels of impulsivity are generally thought to contribute to their increased levels of risk. Impulsivity is a multifaceted construct, however, and little research to date has attempted to identify which facets of impulsivity contribute to the increased rates of substance abuse among individuals with ADHD.

Interactive effects of drinking history and impulsivity on college drinking.

The transition from adolescence into emerging adulthood is a critical developmental period for changes in alcohol use and drinking related problems. Prior research has identified a number of distinct developmental alcohol use trajectories, which appear to be differentially related to young adult drinking outcomes. Another correlate of alcohol use in early adulthood is impulsivity.

The Effects of Preresponse Cues on Inhibitory Control and Response Time in Adults With ADHD.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of preresponse cues on behavioral control in adults with ADHD.

Method: Eighty-eight adults with ADHD and 67 adults with no history of ADHD completed a cued go/no-go task. This task requires participants to respond or inhibit a response to go and no-go targets, respectively, and preresponse cues provide participants with predictive information about the upcoming target.

Reduced acute recovery from alcohol impairment in adults with ADHD.

Rationale: Prior research has found that adults with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show increased sensitivity to the impairing effects of alcohol (Weafer et al., Exp Clin Psychopharmacol 17: 113-121, 2009). However, these studies have focused exclusively on the ascending limb of the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) curve, and it is unclear whether these adults continue to show increased sensitivity during the later phase of the dose as BAC is declining.

Constraints on information processing capacity in adults with ADHD.

Objective: Researchers in the cognitive sciences have demonstrated the existence of processing capacity bottlenecks in the human brain. These capacity bottlenecks restrict our ability to process and act on environmental information. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether adults with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) show reduced capacity of working memory and response selection mechanisms.

Dysregulated negative emotional reactivity as a predictor of chronic peer victimization in childhood.

This study examined the relations of dysregulated negative emotional reactivity, emotional distress, and chronic peer victimization in childhood. A model was proposed whereby dysregulated reactivity was directly and indirectly related to concurrent peer victimization through victimization-related emotional distress. The model further proposed that dysregulated reactivity directly incrementally predicted longitudinal peer victimization above and beyond the effect of concurrent victimization.