SMOKING ADDICTION AND HIGHER LEVEL COGNITIVE PROCESSES

描述：（申请人摘要） 本项目的总体目标是进一步了解（1） 吸烟和吸烟冲动对高水平认知功能的影响 过程，特别是工作记忆和语言理解（2） 记忆的获得和潜在衰退（戒烟后） 参与创造和维持吸烟欲望的代表。 本研究的理论框架包括线索反应 药物冲动理论和工作记忆的多成分模型。 在 在这个框架下，毒品冲动被概念化为 激活与吸烟相关的记忆表征，一旦被激活， 一个线索，是很难抑制的成瘾者， 抑制可能会干扰认知过程， 语言理解中的工作记忆操作。 主要研究者作为B/START赠款的一部分进行的研究 美国国家药物滥用研究所提供了初步的支持 一个假设，表明吸烟的冲动干扰句子 理解力 这项研究还提出了几个新的问题， 目前的提案旨在解决。 第一，在这方面不明确 工作记忆中句子理解过程的点 冲动干扰。 两种可能性是吸烟的冲动干扰了 中央执行程序，它分配处理资源或与 语音回路，它简单地存储了语言信息。 二是 目前尚不清楚吸烟的认知影响会持续多久 坚持。 第三，虽然吸烟的冲动可能会影响对 不相关的句子，没有人知道吸烟的冲动如何影响复杂的 以及更生态有效的语言理解任务，如文本 理解力 第四，我们不知道记忆偏差是如何影响 导致吸烟欲望是由吸烟者获得的，以及是否以及如何 戒烟后偏见减弱。 拟议项目将 系统地回答这些问题。 该项目具有重要的理论和实践意义。 在 理论竞技场，它将大大提高我们对影响的认识 吸烟对认知过程的影响，以及我们对 影响记忆表征获得和衰退的因素 支持吸烟的冲动。 在实际的竞技场中，该项目将提供 深入了解吸烟的潜在有害影响， 教育相关的任务。 这可能进一步导致发展 一个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.