Psychology Substance Abuse and Dependence

Question: Discuss about thePsychologyfor Substance Abuse and Dependence. Answer: Introduction Rashly acting tendency without considering the future consequences is known as impulsivity. It is multi-faced construct which is broadly referred to as the incapability to delay gratification. There are certain psychiatric disorders which are linked strongly with the impulsive behavior which includes attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), substance abuse and dependence, pathological gambling and eating disorders. A very little is known about the impulsivity and there prevails a strong interest to gain better understanding about the processes that are underlying impulsivity. So that the neurobiological mechanism that are contributing the maladaptive behavior symptom of these types of psychopathologies could be fully understand. It is assumed that these understanding will help in the development and betterment of the treatment and prevention strategies of the impulsivity related disorders. In this respect several behavioral measures and self-reports have been made into act wh ich helps to assess several impulsivity components (Cyders Coskunpinar, 2011). Impulsive action and impulsive choice are the two separate components of behavioral impulsivity. Difficulty and delayed gratification and making maladaptive decisions are considered in impulsive choice and it is measured by probability discounting task or delay discounting task which includes a process in which the participants have to choose between large, probabilistic or delayed rewards and small, immediate rewards. To assess impulsive choice in the laboratory risk taking task like Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) have been prepared. Impulsive action refers to the ability by which unwanted or inappropriate behavior is inhibited. To assess the impulsive action there are some laboratory task designed those includes go/no go task, continuous performance task (CPT) and stop signal task (Cyders Coskunpinar, 2012). Validity and Reliability The behavioral components of the impulsivity are linked to a substance abuse either as a consequence of drug use or as a pre-existing trait. The drug abuser and heavy drinkers have a tendency to exhibit greater impulsive choice on discounting task, and they also have a more tendency to make a risker decision on the BART. A heightened levels of the behavioral disinhibition as compared to controls on the stop signal and the go/no-go tasks is present in the alcohol and drug abusers. Impulsive behavior is also affected by acute doses of certain drugs. Alcohol intake makes an increment in both the impulsive action and in impulsive choice. On the other hand a stimulant drug may either increase or decrease the impulsive behaviors depending the nature of the population studied (Weafer et al., 2013). Recent studies reveal that the drug abusers show greater impulsive action after administration of stimulant. A decrease in the impulsive choice, action and inattention is shown by the healthy con trols. If all these evidences are taken together it becomes quite clear that alcohol and drug use can be the cause of different forms of impulsive behaviors (Verdejo-Garca et al., 2010). Though there is a widespread use of the behavioral impulsivity tasks in the research of substance abuse, but in the establishment of the psychometric properties of them the relative devotion of attention is very less, more precisely reliability of them over repeated administration. Clinical samples give some evidence, particularly individual with ADHD, of moderate to high reliability of tasks assessing impulsive action. Similarly good test-retest reliability in healthy adults is demonstrated by impulsive choice measures (Vonmoos et al., 2013). For delay discounting tasks the correlations that is reported is ranging from r = .64 to r = .91 and have a sample sizes ranging from n = 22 to n = 299. On BART the correlation reported is of r = .77 in a sample size of n=40. A study has been used to examine the reliability of the multiple behavioral impulsivity tasks in the same participants (Bari Robbins, 2013). The study includes a battery of executive function measures that is three impuls ive action measures. For commission errors on the go/no-go task a significant test-retest reliability was observed, but it was not observed for the stop signal measures or CPT. However the sample size in this study was n=23 and the assessment of the reliability of a range of behavioral impulsivity tasks was very important, this also includes the measure of the impulsive choice and inattention, in a larger sample of healthy adults (Derefinko et al., 2014). It is very important that the estimation of the measures of the behavioral impulsivity should be reliable because the question that whether these measures assess temporary states mainly or whether stable traits are reflected by them is addressed by it. Naturally, self-report inventories of impulsive personality are taken to be trait-like measures, whereas behavioral tasks are thought to evaluate more changing states. Depending on an individuals motivation, mood, or level of fatigue the performance may be expected to vary from day to day. In the prediction of the vulnerable states a pronounced day to day variability could be of major interest, however if the day to day variability is very low it is indicated that the performance on the task is a stable, trait like measure. Here the examination of the consistency of performance on these measures that are administered on two separate occasions separated at least by one day, and are used to study the task performance variability accordin g to the variation in the mood (Sharma et al., 2014). The recent studies states that the test-retest reliability of a battery of standardized behavioral impulsivity tasks. The measure that are included in the impulsive choice are probability discounting, delay discounting, and the BART; measures of the impulsive action includes the go/no-go task, stop signal task, and CPT, and the measures of inattention includes the reaction time variability on a simple reaction time task and omission errors on the CPT. The UPPS-P and the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale are the two self-report measures of impulsive personality that were widely used (Stahl et al., 2014). Impulsive Choice Delay and Probability Discounting Tasks (DDT and PDT) The relative value of immediate vs. delayed/probable consequences are assessed by these tasks. In these tasks the participants have to make a series of choices between larger, delayed or probabilistic rewards and smaller, immediate rewards. The participants are told that at the end of the session a number will be generated randomly, and depending on that number, they could possibly receive one of the rewards they chose. An altering procedure is used by the task to derive an indifference point at which the definite and probabilistic or delayed and immediate options are judged to be of equivalent subjective value for the participant. The indifference points are plotted to form a discount function, and area under the curve (AUC) of the discount function provides the major dependent measure of impulsive choice. Smaller AUC indicates a steeper discounting curve, and therefore greater impulsivity (Smits et al., 2013). Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) BART is a task in which it provides a measure of risk taking ability. In this task, a balloons appear on the screen, and the participants are told to pump each balloon as large as possible with the help of pressing a key, without exploding the balloon. Every pump upsurges the points earned, but if the balloon explodes, all points are lost from that trial. There were thirty balloons which were presented, and the average number of pumps on trials in which the balloons does not explode are the dependent measure (Kurdziel et al.., 2014). Impulsive Action Stop Signal Task This task deals with the measures of the rapidity of response inhibition. Participants are given instruction to react as rapidly as possible to go signals presented on the screen, and to stop the reactions on the occasional trials in which a stop signal on an auditory tone occurs. The main outcome measure is the time needed to stop a response (Alegre et al., 2013). Go/No-Go Task The go/no-go task deals in the measurement of the ability to obstruct inappropriate reactions when presented with different stimuli. The dependent measure of importance is the number of cases that fails to obstruct a response (Uzefovsky et al., 2016). Continuous Performance Task II This is a task in which the participants have to view a series of letters, and are asked to click a button only when they see a "target" stimulus. The number of false detection of the target stimulus provides the measure of the impulsive action (Mikolov et al., 2013). Inattention Simple Reaction Time Task (SRT) The SRT is a task which is used to measure attention lapses. Participants performed a key press as quickly as possible to a target presented on the screen at variable intervals. Based on a participants delivery of RT, a deviance from the mode score was measured as the variance between a participants mean and modal RT. This value represents the percentage of unusually long RTs, which concluded to reproduce transitory lapses in attention (Gentier et al., 2013). Continuous Performance Task II (CPT) A measure of inattention is also provided by the CPT. The lapses of attention are measured through failures to react to go stimuli that is errors of omission (Mesquita et al., 2016) Impulsive Personality Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS) BIS is a scale that comprises 30-item of self-report measure of impulsivity that comprises of three principal impulsivity features: Motor, Non-planning, and Attention (Steinberg et al., 2013). UPPS-P Impulsive Behavior Scale (UPPS-P) The UPPS-P is a scale which comprises 59-item of self-report inventory which assesses five features of impulsivity: Premeditation, Urgency, Perseverance, Positive Urgency, and Sensation-Seeking (Billieux et al., 2012). Profiles of Mood States (POMS) It is a specification list which consists of 72 adjectives normally used to describe temporary mood states. Eight groups (scales) of objects have been parted empirically using feature analysis (Anger, Anxiety, Vigor, Depression, Fatigue, Friendliness, Confusion, Elation), and from these two composite scales of Arousal and Positive Mood can be measured (Shichiri et al., 2016). Discussion In this study examination of the test-retest reliability of a battery of self-report and behavioral impulsivity measures is done, it includes assessments of impulsive action, impulsive choice, and inattention. Maximum number of the tasks showed high test-retest reliability, the self-report measures represents the highest reliability, tailed by measures of impulsive action and impulsive choice. In contrast the measures of inattention have the least reliability. The Individual variations in mood across sessions were scrutinized in respect to discrepancies in performance across sessions for every behavioral measure. The only relationship that observed was higher positive arousal and mood were linked with less impulsive choice on the DDT. The recent study shows that the high reliability of behavioral measures of impulsivity that is observed is consistent with previous reports. The steady performance observed throughout the sessions proposes that these tasks genuinely assess reasonably stable forms of behavior, consistent with a measure of a trait. Along with this the deficiency of association between the variability in the task performance and variability in the mood measures (except DDT) suggests that the day-to-day changeability in mood is improbable to have a strong impact over the performance of these types of tasks. It is indistinct that why the DDT particularly was related to mood states. However, in spite of the associations between mood and discounting within subjects, the measure establishes high reliability which suggests the impact of mood over performance do not significantly diminish from its stability. Taking these findings as a whole, it can be established that the consistency of examination of the beha vioral impulsivity tasks that supports the continued use of them as indicators of individual differences in the research of substance abuse. The imported thing that is to be noted is that in spite of the great test-retest reliability and analogous mean performance scores detected throughout the sessions, statistically important variances in performance were witnessed for certain of the measures. It will be very important to consider while designing the studies which includes repetitive valuations of behavioral impulsivity. Precisely, it is very crucial that the studies premeditated to inspect how the manipulation shows its influence over impulsivity (for example Alcohol administration, stress-induction, drug administration,) and hire a counter-balanced strategies in order to explain the small changes that should be incorporated in performance over sessions and that are not related to the manipulation of the study. Along with this the participants are allowed to perform acquaintance or rehearsal trials on these types of tasks could be helpful to stabilize performance over forthcoming sessions. The studies of present day had several limitations. The study includes only a certain group of participants which restricts the generalization of the results. However it was necessary that the restrictiveness of the racial make-up of the sample should be there so that the current analyses of the data can be done, it would be significant for forthcoming studies to repeat these finding in a more varied sample. Evidences suggested that impulsivity fluctuates with the phase of menstrual cycle, and this is another feature that should be taken into consideration in respect to reliability of impulsivity tasks in future studies (Perales et al., 2009). Lastly, the recent study only evaluated task performance on two circumstances. Assumed that evaluates the effects of drug on impulsivity measures often include repetitive administrations of variable drug quantities and dosages; it will be very significant to examine constancy of performance through multiple analysis sessions. Overall, the current examination establishes that the behavioral measures of impulsivity are dependable measures and hence can be assuredly used to evaluate the various aspects of impulsivity as intermediate phenotypes of the drug abuse. These tasks can be used to examine relations between current use of drug and impulsive behaviors, the part of impulsivity in forecasting the long-term drug abuse and use, acute drug effects, and the impact of chronic use of drug over impulsive behaviors. Furthermore, these measures can be used potentially to screen pharmacotherapies aiming impulse control procedures in order to fight against alcohol and drug dependency. Ultimately these task are used in the neuroimaging studies and these studies will help in additional understanding of the knowledge about the neurobiological base of the impulsive behavior. Reference Alegre, M., Lopez-Azcarate, J., Obeso, I., Wilkinson, L., Rodriguez-Oroz, M. C., Valencia, M., ... Obeso, J. A. (2013). 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