SMOKING ADDICTION AND HIGHER LEVEL COGNITIVE PROCESSES

描述：(申请人摘要) 这个项目的总体目标是进一步深入了解(1) 吸烟和吸烟冲动对高水平认知的影响 加工，特别是工作记忆和语言理解；(2) (戒烟后)记忆的获得和潜在衰退 参与创造和维持吸烟冲动的陈述。 本研究的理论框架由线索反应性构成 药物冲动理论和工作记忆的多成分模型。在……里面 在这个框架中，药物冲动被概念化为 吸烟相关记忆表征的激活，一旦被激活 一条线索，对于瘾君子来说是很难抑制的，由此活动 抑制可能导致对认知过程的干扰，如 语言理解中使用的工作记忆操作。 首席调查员作为B/START赠款的一部分进行的研究 国家药物滥用研究所对此提供了初步支持 吸烟冲动干扰句子的假说 理解。这项研究还提出了几个新的问题， 目前的提案旨在解决。首先，这一点还不清楚 吸烟对工作记忆中句子理解加工的影响 冲动干扰。两种可能性是吸烟冲动干扰 中央执行程序，它分配处理资源或与 语音环路，它短暂地存储语言信息。第二，它是 目前尚不清楚吸烟冲动对认知的影响会持续多久 坚持不懈。第三，尽管吸烟的冲动可能会影响对 无关的句子，关于吸烟冲动如何影响复合体，我们一无所知 以及更具生态有效性的语言理解任务，如文本 理解。第四，我们对记忆偏向是如何产生的一无所知 导致吸烟冲动是由吸烟者获得的，以及关于这是否以及如何 戒烟后，偏见就会消失。拟议的项目将 系统地解决这些问题。 该项目具有很强的理论和实践意义。在 理论舞台上，它将大大提高我们对效果的理解 吸烟对认知过程的刺激，以及我们对 影响记忆表征习得和衰退的因素 支持吸烟冲动。在实践领域，该项目将提供 洞察吸烟冲动对健康的潜在有害影响 与教育相关的任务。它可能会进一步导致发展 一种评估吸烟成瘾的认知工具。

DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Abstract) The general aims of this project are to gain further insight into (1) the effects of cigarette smoking and smoking urges on higher-level cognitive processes, particularly working memory and language comprehension and (2) the acquisition and potential decay (after smoking cessation) of the memory representations involved in the creation and maintenance of smoking urges. The theoretical framework of this research consists of cue reactivity theories of drug urges and multi-component models of working memory. In this framework, drug urges are conceptualized as the result of the activation of smoking-related memory representations that, once activated by a cue, are difficult to suppress for the addict, whereby the activity of suppression may lead to interference with cognitive processes such as working memory operations used in language comprehension. Research conducted by the principal investigator as part of a B/START grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse provides initial support for this hypothesis in showing that smoking urges interfere with sentence comprehension. This research has also raised several new questions that the current proposal is intended to address. First, it is not clear at this point with which sentence comprehension processes in working memory smoking urges interfere. Two possibilities are that smoking urges interfere with the central executive, which allocates processing resources or with the phonological loop, which briefly stores verbal information. Second, it is not known at this point how long the cognitive effects of smoking urges persist. Third, although smoking urges may affect the comprehension of unrelated sentences, nothing is known about how smoking urges affect complex and more ecologically valid language comprehension tasks, such as text comprehension. Fourth, nothing is known about how the memory bias that may lead to smoking urges is acquired by smokers and about whether and how this bias decays after smoking cessation. The proposed project will systematically address these questions. This project has substantial theoretical and practical relevance. In the theoretical arena, it will greatly enhance our understanding of the effects of smoking urges on cognitive processing, as well as our understanding of the factors affecting the acquisition and decay of memory representations supporting smoking urges. In the practical arena, the project will provide insight into the potentially harmful effects of smoking urges on educationally relevant tasks. It might furthermore lead to the development of a cognitive tool for assessing smoking addiction.