Soft Commitment as a Mechanism to Prevent Preference Reversals in Smokers

描述（由申请人提供）：吸烟，像其他形式的药物依赖，在美国构成重大的健康威胁。公共宣传运动扩大了公众对吸烟后果的了解，大多数吸烟者表示希望戒烟。然而，绝大多数吸烟者在戒烟的尝试中失败了;自我控制的失败。我们的长期目标是进一步了解影响自我控制失败的变量，以促进对香烟和其他滥用药物依赖的综合治疗方案的发展。我们将在偏好逆转的背景下研究失败的禁欲努力的现象，这种现象是指当两种结果在时间上都是远端时，更大和更延迟的奖励比更小但延迟更少的奖励更受欢迎，但随着时间的推移，两种奖励都变得更接近，就会切换到更小的奖励。这些偏好逆转可以提供一个框架，以理解为什么吸烟者计划戒烟，但未能启动或保持戒烟尝试。人们提出了一种称为软承诺的机制来防止这些偏好逆转，即当奖励在远端时，重复选择更大、更延迟的奖励会产生对该替代品的反应持久性，即使奖励变得更近。我们假设，软承诺机制可以防止或限制偏好逆转。在具体目标1中，我们将确定吸烟者是否比不吸烟者更早地表现出偏好逆转。在具体目标2中，我们将比较不同的延迟贴现模型预测偏好逆转时间位置的能力。在具体目标3中，我们将检验软承诺程序在防止吸烟者和非吸烟者偏好逆转方面的有效性。在具体目标4中，我们将确定当吸烟者正在经历尼古丁戒断时软承诺程序的有效性。如果软承诺确实能防止人类吸烟者的偏好逆转，那么当偏好逆转导致戒烟尝试失败时，这种程序可能会被修改以防止偏好逆转。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Cigarette smoking, like other forms of drug dependence, poses a significant health threat in the United States. Public awareness campaigns have expanded the public's knowledge of the consequences of cigarette smoking, and the majority of smokers express a desire to quit. However, the vast majority of smokers fail in their attempts to abstain from cigarette smoking; a failure of self-control. Our long-term goal is to further knowledge about the variables that influence failures of self-control in an effort to facilitate the development of comprehensive treatment programs for dependence on cigarettes and other drugs of abuse. We will examine the phenomenon of failed abstinence efforts in the context of preference reversals, a phenomenon where a larger and more-delayed reward is preferred to a smaller but less-delayed when both outcomes are temporally distal, but switches to the smaller reward as time passes and both rewards become more proximal. These preference reversals may provide a framework for understanding why a cigarette smoker plans to quit smoking, but fails to initiate or maintain a quit attempt. A mechanism called soft commitment has been proposed to prevent these preference reversals, where repeated choice for the larger, more-delayed reward while the reward is distal develops response persistence for that alternative that is maintained even as the reward becomes more proximal. We hypothesize that a soft commitment mechanism can prevent or limit preference reversals. In Specific Aim 1, we will determine if cigarette smokers exhibit earlier preference reversals than nonsmokers. In Specific Aim 2, we will compare different models of delay discounting on their ability to predict the temporal location of preference reversal. In Specific Aim 3, we will examine the efficacy of a soft commitment procedure in preventing preference reversals in cigarette smokers and nonsmokers. In Specific Aim 4, we will determine the efficacy of soft commitment procedures when a cigarette smoker is experiencing nicotine withdrawal. If soft commitment does prevent preference reversals in human cigarette smokers, such procedures might be modified to prevent preference reversals when the preference reversal results in failures of abstinence attempts.