Individual- and school-level patterns of substance use and mental health symptoms in a population-based sample of secondary students: A multilevel latent profile analysis.

Background: 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.

Autonomic nervous system markers of music-elicited analgesia in people with fibromyalgia: A double-blind randomized pilot study.

Purpose: To investigate the feasibility of using music listening by adults with fibromyalgia (FM) as a potential tool for reducing pain sensitivity.

Patients And Methods: We report results from a double-blind two-arm parallel randomized pilot study (NCT04059042) in nine participants with FM. Pain tolerance and threshold were measured objectively using quantitative sensory tests; autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity was measured with an electrocardiogram.

Next-day responsibilities attenuate demand for alcohol among a crowdsourced sample of community adults.

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.

Intracortical myelin in individuals with alcohol use disorder: An initial proof-of-concept study.

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).

Behavioral economic methods predict future COVID-19 vaccination.

Increasing vaccine utilization is critical for numerous diseases, including COVID-19, necessitating novel methods to forecast uptake. Behavioral economic methods have been developed as rapid, scalable means of identifying mechanisms of health behavior engagement. However, most research using these procedures is cross-sectional and evaluates prediction of behaviors with already well-established repertories.

Substance-related cross-commodity purchase tasks: A systematic review.

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.

Choices between money and hyper-palatable food: Choice impulsivity and eating behavior.

Objective: Choice impulsivity may influence eating behavior. The study tested whether choice impulsivity, termed delay discounting, may be related to food generally, or may be specific to hyper-palatable foods (HPF). The study also determined whether a discounting task with choices between money and food may have utility in predicting obesity-related outcomes.

Valuation of future alcohol in cross-commodity delay discounting is associated with alcohol misuse/consequences.

Objective: Delay discounting (DD) refers to the reduction in reward value as a function of its delay, and individuals who misuse alcohol typically exhibit high rates of DD, which may reflect a general preference for immediate outcomes. This interpretation is based on studies utilizing single-commodity DD tasks where the same commodity is available immediately and following a delay. Cross-commodity DD tasks require individuals to choose between different commodities at varying delays and may provide the potential to further illuminate intertemporal preference associated with alcohol misuse.

The Role of Delay Discounting in the Generation of Stressful Life Events Across Adolescence.

Hammen's (1991) model of stress generation suggests that depressed individuals are more likely to behave in ways that bring about greater exposure to negative life events. More recent research suggests that adolescents with other types of psychological vulnerabilities, including those more likely to make impulsive choices, may also be predisposed to experience greater increases in stress over time. The current study examined whether delay discounting (DD), defined as the tendency to prefer smaller but immediately available rewards relative to larger, delayed rewards, predicts the generation of negative life events across adolescence and whether this is due to the association between DD and depressive symptoms.

Social vulnerability, COVID-19 impact, and decision making among adults in a low-resource community.

Socially vulnerable individuals, including those with greater exposure to adversity and social instability, are at greater risk for a variety of negative outcomes following exposure to public health crises. One hypothesized mechanism linking social vulnerability to poor health outcomes is delay discounting, the behavioral tendency to select smaller immediately available rewards relative to larger delayed rewards. However, little research has examined the impact of real-world disease outbreaks, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, on the relation between social vulnerability and delay discounting.

I'm wearing a mask, but are they?: Perceptions of self-other differences in COVID-19 health behaviors.

As information about COVID-19 safety behavior changed, people had to judge how likely others were to protect themselves through mask-wearing and vaccination seeking. In a large, campus-wide survey, we assessed whether University of Kansas students viewed others' protective behaviors as different from their own, how much students assumed others shared their beliefs and behaviors, and which individual differences were associated with those estimations. Participants in our survey (N = 1, 704; 81.

Neuroanatomical foundations of delayed reward discounting decision making II: Evaluation of sulcal morphology and fractal dimensionality.

Delayed 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.

Change in hyper-palatable food availability in the US food system over 30 years: 1988-2018.

Objective: To quantify the change in availability of hyper-palatable foods (HPF) in the US foods system over 30 years (1988-2018).

Design: Three datasets considered representative of the US food system were used in analyses to represent years 1988, 2001 and 2018. A standardised definition from Fazzino (2019) that specifies combinations of nutrients was used to identify HPF.

Reward sensitivity, eating behavior, and obesity-related outcomes: A systematic review.

Introduction: Previous research has identified reward sensitivity as an important factor that may contribute to the engagement in eating behavior (e.g., binge eating, emotional eating, etc.

Beyond Systematic and Unsystematic Responding: Latent Class Mixture Models to Characterize Response Patterns in Discounting Research.

Operant behavioral economic methods are increasingly used in basic research on the efficacy of reinforcers as well as in large-scale applied research (e.g., evaluation of empirical public policy).

Functional Brain Connectivity and Inhibitory Control in Older Adults: A Preliminary Study.

According to the inhibition deficit hypothesis, the ability to inhibit unwanted or irrelevant thoughts and behaviors decreases with age, which can have a significant impact on cognitive and emotional processing. However, studies examining inhibition and age have shown mixed results, with some studies finding a decrease in inhibitory control as individuals age, while others have found no relationship. The goal of this proof-of-concept study was to examine the underlying neural mechanisms that may explain why some older adults are better than others at inhibitory control by investigating the relationship between resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) of the salience network, a network critical for detecting and focusing attention toward relevant stimuli while ignoring irrelevant information in the environment, and a behavioral measure of inhibitory control (Stroop Task interference score) in a sample of 65 healthy older individuals (ages 65+).

Differential Probability Discounting Rates of Gamblers in an American Indian Population.

Probability discounting, a subset of behavioral economic research, has a rich history of investigating choice behavior, especially as it pertains to risky decision making. Gambling involves both choice behavior and risky decision making which makes it an ideal behavior to investigate with discounting tasks. With proximity to a casino being one of the biggest risk factors, studies into the American Indian population have been a neglected population of study.

Resting state functional connectivity in alcohol users and co-users of other substances.

Polysubstance use (PSU) is the use of more than one psychoactive substance simultaneously or independently, and occurs in roughly half of individuals who seek treatment for substance use. The current study sought to use resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) to examine functional connectivity in participants who report using multiple or single substances. Participants were drawn from a larger neuroimaging study.

The Effects of a Single Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation Session on Impulsivity and Risk Among a Sample of Adult Recreational Cannabis Users.

Individuals with substance use disorders exhibit risk-taking behaviors, potentially leading to negative consequences and difficulty maintaining recovery. Non-invasive brain stimulation techniques such as transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) have yielded mixed effects on risk-taking among healthy controls. Given the importance of risk-taking behaviors among substance-using samples, this study aimed to examine the effects of tDCS on risk-taking among a sample of adults using cannabis.

Hyper-palatable food consumption during binge-eating episodes: A comparison of intake during binge eating and restricting.

Objective: The study aim was to elucidate the degree to which hyper-palatable foods (HPF) are consumed during binge episodes compared to restricting episodes, and to test the association between HPF intake during each episode and respective episode frequency.

Method: This study was a secondary analysis of data from a larger study on eating disorders. The present sample included adults (N = 147, 83% women) diagnosed with sub-threshold (41%) or full-threshold (59%) bulimia nervosa (BN).

Dissociative symptomatology mediates the relation between posttraumatic stress disorder severity and alcohol-related problems.

Background: Up to 50% of individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) endorse problematic alcohol use. Typically, these individuals present with more complex and often more severe PTSD symptoms than those who do not report problematic alcohol use. Emerging literature suggests that heightened symptoms of dissociation are likewise associated with greater PTSD symptom severity.

Bridging gaps by including culture: Development and empirical test of the culturally informed theory for disordered eating among Black women.

Background: Leading eating disorder (ED) theories were informed primarily by samples of White females. Therefore, ED theories lack consideration of sociocultural factors that may impact ED symptom development among Black women. The current study proposed the first culturally informed theory for disordered eating among Black women, positing that ethnic discrimination, strong black woman (SBW) ideology (cultural and societal expectations of strength), and culturally informed appearance satisfaction may significantly impact stress.

Are You Sure: Preference and Ambivalence in Delay Discounting.

Delay discounting (DD) research has become ubiquitous due to its robust associations with clinical outcomes. Typical DD tasks involve multiple trials in which participants indicate preference between smaller, sooner and larger, later rewards. Scoring of these binary choice tasks has not considered trial-level ambivalence as a possible decision-making construct.

Alcohol demand as a predictor of drinking behavior in the natural environment.

Background And Aims: Alcohol demand, a measure of alcohol's reinforcing value, is associated with greater alcohol consumption and alcohol-related problems. Although alcohol demand has primarily been evaluated as a 'trait-like', individual difference measure, recent evidence indicates that demand exhibits meaningful short-term fluctuations. We aimed to determine whether moment-to-moment fluctuations in alcohol demand in individuals' natural drinking environments predicted drinking occurrence, drinking continuation, and drinking quantity.

Applied Quantitative Analysis of Behavior: What It Is, and Why We Care-Introduction to the Special Section.

Science evolves from prior approximations of its current form. Interest in changes in species over time was not a new concept when Darwin made his famous voyage to the Galapagos Islands; concern with speciation stretches back throughout the history of modern thought. Behavioral science also does and must evolve.