Published laboratory studies from the last 50 years that included measures of craving and tobacco-consumption or tobacco-seeking measures were included in a meta-analysis in order to assess the relationship between craving and tobacco use. Seeking measures were further subdivided into those that reflected control by nonautomatic and automatic cognitive processes. Of 2,498 articles identified by the initial literature review, 204 analyses from 50 studies were deemed eligible. Overall, the relationship between craving and outcome behaviors was modest (r = .20, p < .001). Studies that imposed abstinence during data collection showed a stronger relationship between craving and outcome (r = .24, p < .001) than studies that did not (r = .18, p < .001). Further, of those studies that reported dependence, the overall association between craving and outcome was stronger for smokers who were less dependent. Separate meta-analyses revealed that the type of outcome measure moderated the omnibus effect, with the relationship between craving and nonautomatic seeking measures (r = .34, p < .001) being stronger than the relationship between craving and automatic seeking/consumption measures (both rs = 0.15, p < .001). These findings suggest that craving may play a role in, but does not fully account for, tobacco-use behaviors; furthermore, the extent to which craving predicts behavior may be increased when the behavior is under nonautomatic cognitive control.
The findings support the reliability and validity of the QVC and suggest it could be used in laboratory and clinical settings as a psychometrically sound measure of vaping craving.
Developing a better understanding of how and under what circumstances alcohol affects the emotions, cognitions and neural functions that precede and contribute to dangerous behaviors during intoxication may help to reduce their occurrence. Alcohol intoxication has recently been shown to reduce defensive reactivity and anxiety more during uncertain vs certain threat. However, alcohol’s effects on emotionally motivated attention to these threats are unknown. Alcohol may disrupt both affective response to and attentional processing of uncertain threats making intoxicated individuals less able to avoid dangerous and costly behaviors. To test this possibility, we examined the effects of a broad range of blood alcohol concentrations on 96 participants’ sub-cortically mediated defensive reactivity (startle potentiation), retrospective subjective anxiety (self-report) and cortically assessed emotionally motivated attention (probe P3 event related potential) while they experienced visually cued uncertain and certain location electric shock threat. As predicted, alcohol decreased defensive reactivity and subjective anxiety more during uncertain vs certain threat. In a novel finding, alcohol dampened emotionally motivated attention during uncertain but not certain threat. This effect appeared independent of alcohol’s effects on defensive reactivity and subjective anxiety. These results suggest that alcohol intoxication dampens processing of uncertain threats while leaving processing of certain threats intact.
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.
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