Adolescent Changes in Implicit Cognitions and Prevention of Substance Abuse

Abstract

This chapter explores the growth of implicit substance-use associations during early adolescence and their implications for the development of primary and secondary prevention programs. Increases in implicit measures of substance-use cognitions are highly correlated with, and prospectively predict, the initiation of youth alcohol and marijuana use. We propose that implicit memory measures may uniquely reveal decision-relevant indices of incentive motivation and behavioral choice. As such, implicit measures should be useful to (1) identify and target the stage of risk for substance-use initiation, (2) provide early sensitive measures of effective change from prevention programs, and (3) guide the development of new methods of persuasive messages that focus on behaviorally relevant cognitive changes.

Self-coded indirect memory associations and

“…The variance in levels of alcohol and marijuana use was significantly correlated with corresponding substance-use memory associations that were coded using standard procedures . These findings are consistent with many previous demonstrations of concurrent prediction of substance use (Ames et al, 2007;Krank & Goldstein, 2006;Krank & Wall, 2006;Rooke, Hine, & Thorsteinsson, 2008;Stacy, 1995Stacy, , 1997Stacy et al, 2006).…”

“…The method generates responses that are spontaneous, possibly implicit (Ames et al, 2007;Stacy et al, 2006), and accessible (Frigon & Krank, 2009). Importantly, these measures predict unique variance in substance use greater than is predicted by a variety of risk factors and explicit measures of association such as outcome expectancies (Ames et al, 2007;Krank & Goldstein, 2006;Stacy et al, 2006). Indirect word association tests are important because they capture accessible implicit memories that are relevant to substance use and that are not captured by direct methods.…”

Context Effects of Alcohol Availability at Home: Implicit Alcohol Associations and the Prediction of Adolescents’ Drinking Behavior

“…Parents who have relatively more alcohol available at home might consume more alcohol. The effect of adolescents' implicit alcohol associations on drinking frequency might be strengthened through a process of social learning (Krank & Goldstein, 2006;Van Der Vorst et al, 2013). This suggests that parents can influence the development of implicit alcohol associations in their offspring unintentionally, for example through their parenting behaviors and own drinking.…”

“…Individual factors such as working memory Thush et al, 2008), response inhibition (Peeters et al, 2012), and personality (Zack et al, 2002) influence the predictive value of alcohol associations on alcohol. Social factors, such as the context in which behavioral decisions are made, determine the extent to which implicit associations are accessible from memory (Krank & Goldstein, 2006). These associations are more easily activated in an alcohol setting (e.g., bar) compared with a neutral context (Havermans et al, 2004;Lau-Barraco & Dunn, 2009).…”

Tendencias en el estudio de la cognición implícita relacionada con el alcohol

“…In this cases, the predominance of one or other process on behavior will depend on several factors, including: the cognitive effort required by the behavior and its degree of habituation (Conner, Perugini, O'Gorman, Ayres & Prestwich, 2007), the level of motivation or opportunity that the subject has to make a thoughtful deliberation (Fazio, 1990), the ability of self-regulation and the cognitive resources (Friese, Bargas-Avila, Hofmann & Wiers, 2010), the age (Krank & Goldstein, 2006) and the development of the frontal lobe (Goldberg & Podell, 2000).…”