Various authors have described the elements of impulsive approach and inhibitory control in drug users. These two components have been studied in terms of personality traits, performance on tasks ...that measure impulsive behavior, and neurophysiology. However, few studies have analyzed the association between these constructs. Thus, the aim of the present study is to analyze the associations between personality traits and performance on impulsivity tasks.
A follow-up study was conducted with a baseline assessment at the beginning and end of treatment. The sample was composed of 121 patients undergoing treatment in therapeutic communities. Personality domains were evaluated through the PID-5. The impulsivity tasks employed were the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), Delay Discounting Test (DDT), Go/No-Go and Stroop test.
A correlation was found between DDT scores and the domains of detachment (r = -.315; p<.01), antagonism (r = -.294; p<.01), and disinhibition (r = .215; p<.05). Performance on the Stroop task was significantly associated with psychoticism (r = .232; p<.05) and negative affect (r = .212; p<.05). Multivariate analysis revealed that IGT scores and negative affect predict retention in treatment.
These findings partially support the hypothesized association between sensation-seeking personality traits and detachment with impulsive choice tasks; and the relationships between negative affect and psychoticism traits with performance on inhibitory control tasks. Further, impulsive choice task scores and negative affect are both shown to predict retention in treatment.
This study analyzed, in a Spanish sample, the differences in emotional processing in patients diagnosed with substance use disorder (SUD) and patients with a dual diagnosis (DD), and tested whether ...alterations in emotional regulation were related to the severity of dependence and consumption during treatment. A descriptive follow-up study was conducted with 88 adult outpatients (83% men) who were receiving treatment for alcohol and cocaine SUD. Of the sample, 43.2% presented dual diagnosis according to DSM-IV-TR criteria. Emotional processing was assessed with the IAPS, and dependence severity with the SDSS. Consumption was determined with self-reports and toxicological tests. Regression analyses revealed that the DD group had more difficulties in identifying the valence and arousal of the images than patients with SUD. Patients with DD presented more difficulty in identifying images in which valence was manipulated, but not in those in which arousal was manipulated. Cocaine use during treatment was associated with difficulties in identifying unpleasant (U = 734.0; p < .05) and arousing (U = 723.5; p < .05) images. Although these results are preliminary, findings suggest that impaired emotional processing is aggravated in dual patients, although it may be a common transdiagnostic factor in SUD and other comorbid mental disorders. Findings highlight the importance of evaluating emotional regulation to better understand its possible role in the maintenance of substance use.
Abstract
The objective of this study was to compare performance on a comprehensive impulsivity battery of SUD outpatients who dropout versus those who do not dropout and of abstainers versus ...relapsers at 3 and 12 months of treatment follow-up. Impulsivity was measured at the start of treatment and adherence and relapse at 3 and 12 months. The participants are 115 outpatients with SUD. Motor impulsivity (Affective Go/No Go), attentional impulsivity (Stroop), delay discounting (Monetary Choice Questionnaire; MCQ), and decision making (Iowa Gambling Task; IGT) were assessed. Impulsivity was not associated with dropout. There were no relationships between treatment outcomes and the MCQ and IGT. Stroop and affective Go-No Go were associated with relapse at 3 and 12 months. Affective motor disinhibition and cognitive disinhibition predict relapse in outpatients. No cognitive aspect of impulsiveness is related to dropout.
A behavior analytic model of analogical reasoning has been developed over the past two decades. Applying this model, we analyzed 12 visual analogies of the Test Of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI-2) and ...predicted competition between stimulus-stimulus relations based on the number of nonarbitrary relations shared between the sample and the comparisons. Thirty-three adult participants solved the selected items while their eye movements were monitored using an eye-tracking device. For every item, a repeated measures ANOVA showed that observation duration was significantly higher in the response alternatives that shared more nonarbitrary relations with the sample (
p
< 0.001). The correct comparison was observed for a longer period of time, followed by the higher rank distractors, and then the rest. The effect size ranged from 0.293 to 0.764. The systematic application of the behavior analytic model of analogical reasoning allowed us to predict the behavior of participants taking an intelligence test based on visual analogies, at least to some extent. This work extends the application of the behavior analytic model of analogical reasoning to a rather complex situation (i.e., a published intelligence test).
Implicit cognition has been linked to relapse in substance use disorder (SUD). Studies on attentional bias have found different outcomes related to the therapeutic context, finding an association ...with relapse in inpatients but not in outpatients. There are no similar studies that use associations in semantic memory as a measure of implicit cognition.
(i) to analyze the relationship between a measure of associations in semantic memory and relapse in inpatients and outpatients; (ii) to compare the evolution of these associations between inpatients and outpatients after 3 months of treatment.
Eighty nine outpatients and 94 inpatients with SUD for cocaine and alcohol participated in this study. We employed a longitudinal design with a baseline evaluation and follow-up after three months, using the Word Association Task for Drug Use Disorder (WAT-DUD).
The choice of drug-related words predicted relapse in cocaine (odds ratio = 1.97, z = 2.01, p = .045) and alcohol-cocaine (odds ratio = 2.39, z = 2.55, p = .011) use. Follow-up at 3 months revealed a reduction in the choice of drug-related words in inpatients (Z = 2.031, p = .042).
A greater choice of drug-associated words in the presence of ambiguous images was related to relapse in inpatients but not in outpatients. The inpatients group showed a reduction in the semantic association with drugs during the first three months of treatment.
An experiment with pigeons was conducted for 46 months in order to test the multiple-exemplar training (MET) hypothesis of symmetry derivation. According to this hypothesis, symmetry is progressively ...derived after an extensive training of multiple examples of direct and inverse relations among arbitrary stimuli.
Four pigeons were given extensive training in direct (e.g., A1-B1; A2-B2) and inverse (e.g., B1-A1; B2-A2) arbitrary conditional discriminations. Once pigeons learned a complete reversal (e.g., AB and BA), a new reversal with different stimuli was trained (e.g., CD and DC, etc.). Subjects were assigned to two different stimulus sets, and sample-comparison order was counterbalanced.
Pigeons learned between 4 and 24 conditional discriminations, but none showed evidence of symmetry. Discriminability of samples and comparisons was identified as an important factor because it affected direct and inverse discriminations differently.
Despite the negative results reported, this study provides some insights that might help to improve current research on MET and symmetry: We describe some lessons learned about the design of long-term experiments involving a high number of stimuli and finally, we discuss some control strategies for stimulus discriminability that might also contribute to facilitate symmetry derivation in pigeons.
Background: Interpretation bias tasks such as word association tests have shown a moderate relation with substance use, but most studies have been conducted in nonclinical samples and these tasks are ...difficult to rate. Objectives: To provide: (1) reliability evidence of the Word Association Task for Drug Use Disorder (WAT-DUD), a novel and easy-to-rate instrument for measuring interpretation bias and (2) validity evidence based on the relationship between the WAT-DUD and variables associated with patterns of drug use and treatment outcomes. Methods: 186 patients (67 outpatients and 119 inpatients, 90% males) participated in the study. The task consisted of a simultaneous conditional discrimination where an image (either explicit or ambiguous) was the sample and two words (drug-related or not) served as comparison stimuli. The Substance Dependence Severity Scale, the Cocaine Craving Questionnaire-Now, and the Multidimensional Craving Scale were also used. Results: The ambiguous images items showed adequate reliability in terms of internal consistency (α = .80) and test-retest reliability (79.7% on average). The interpretation of images as drug-related was positively correlated with craving for cocaine (r = .20; p = .029), alcohol (r = .30; p = . 01), and alcohol withdrawal (r = .31; p = .01) along with severity of alcohol dependence (r = .23; p = .04). No relationship was found with the severity of cocaine dependence, or its symptoms of abstinence. Conclusion: WAT-DUD shows psychometric properties that support its use in research contexts, although more research is needed for its use in the clinical setting.
Section III of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition proposes an alternative diagnostic model for personality disorders based on the identification of pathological ...personality facets. Despite the existing evidence for the relationship between personality disorders and impulsivity in patients with substance use disorders, no study has yet been conducted within this framework. Thus, using a sample of 110 patients with substance use disorders, the present work aims to (a) analyze the relationship between the different personality facets and domains evaluated by the Personality Inventory for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (PID-5) and impulsivity and (b) explore the relationships between severity of dependency and personality facets and dimensions of impulsivity. With respect to PID-5 domains, except for sensation-seeking, antagonism and disinhibition showed correlations higher than .30 with the following dimensions: urgency, premeditation, perseverance, sensation-seeking, and positive urgency (UPPS-P). The domains of detachment and psychoticism showed weaker correlations with different UPPS-P dimensions. The risk-taking PID-5 facet explains 49% variability of the sensation-seeking dimension of UPPS-P, whereas the impulsivity facet was significant on regression models computed with lack of premeditation, positive urgency, and negative urgency dimensions. Heroin and cocaine severity of dependence were moderately related to different personality facets. Lower relationships between alcohol and cannabis severity of dependence, impulsivity, and PID-5 facets were found. As a conclusion, the relationships between personality domains and impulsivity behave similarly to their five-factor equivalents for some dimensions but not for negative urgency, which might indicate the lack of specificity of this dimension of impulsivity on this type of patients.
The purpose of this systematic review was to examine the evidence for impaired executive functioning in patients diagnosed with a dual pathology of personality disorder (PD) and substance use ...disorder, and to identify whether differences exist in comparison to those with a single diagnosis. Methods: A systematic search was conducted to identify studies using measures of executive functioning in patients with PD-substance use disorder dual pathology. Sixteen studies were selected. Results: The results indicate that dual pathology patients with Cluster C personality disorder do not differ from controls, and that the presence of dual pathology does not influence the updating domain of executive functioning. The findings were inconclusive with regard to dual pathology patients with Cluster B personality disorders. Whilst the various studies consistently show that these patients show worse performance than the control groups, here are contradictory results with regard to whether Cluster B personality disorders add more alterations in executive functioning to those that already appear in substance use disorder. Conclusions: The results suggest the need for further research that more adequately controls variables such as time in treatment, medication, and sample size, whilst there is also a need to employ longitudinal designs that include more patients from Clusters A and C.
Equivalence-Equivalence responding, based on equivalence class formation, is a key concept of the functional-analytic model of analogical reasoning held by RFT theorists. Relational stimulus control ...is supposed to play an important role in this arbitrary relational response. Previous research showed that mere training of the prerequisites for equivalence class formation is not always enough for the derivation of equivalence-equivalence responding, even in adults. In the first experiment, with 12 adult participants, we designed a matching-to-sample training and testing procedure that, although it provided all necessary conditions, did not lead to Equivalence-Equivalence responding in most participants, so that the efficacy of a facilitation procedure could be assessed. In Experiment 2, with 32 valid participants, a matching-to-sample procedure based on non-arbitrary relations was introduced to assess its efficacy in enhancing stimulus control by the relational properties of sample and comparisons. Results showed a moderate effect: 40.6% of the participants passed the test after being exposed to a non-arbitrary relational matching task (but none without it). This research underlines the importance of non-arbitrary relational responses in the derivation of more complex repertoires.
PDF
