The neurobiology of substance and behavioral addictions

Behavioral addictions, such as pathological gambling, kleptomania, pyromania, compulsive buying, and compulsive sexual behavior, represent significant public health concerns and are associated with high rates of psychiatric comorbidity and mortality. Although research into the biology of these behaviors is still in the early stages, recent advances in the understanding of motivation, reward, and addiction have provided insight into the possible pathophysiology of these disorders. Biochemical, functional neuroimaging, genetic studies, and treatment research have suggested a strong neurobiological link between behavioral addictions and substance use disorders. Given the substantial co-occurrence of these groups of disorders, improved understanding of their relationship has important implications not only for further understanding the neurobiology of both categories of disorders but also for improving prevention and treatment strategies.     

Can cognitive processes be inferred from neuroimaging data?

There is much interest currently in using functional neuroimaging techniques to understand better the nature of cognition. One particular practice that has become common is 'reverse inference', by which the engagement of a particular cognitive process is inferred from the activation of a particular brain region. Such inferences are not deductively valid, but can still provide some information. Using a Bayesian analysis of the BrainMap neuroimaging database, I characterize the amount of additional evidence in favor of the engagement of a cognitive process that can be offered by a reverse inference. Its usefulness is particularly limited by the selectivity of activation in the region of interest. I argue that cognitive neuroscientists should be circumspect in the use of reverse inference, particularly when selectivity of the region in question cannot be established or is known to be weak.     

Lateralized scratching in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes): Evidence of a functional asymmetry during arousal

This study evaluated laterality in scratching by chimpanzees (n = 89) during socially arousing circumstances. Hand use and the side of the body scratched was recorded during a baseline and experimental condition. In the experimental condition, chimpanzees were shown a video of other conspecifics sharing, fighting over, and consuming a watermelon. Self-touches were categorized as either rubs or scratches. The chimpanzees showed a significant right hand bias for rubbing and also significantly directed the rubs to the right side of the body. For scratching, the chimpanzees showed no hand preference but a significant bias for scratching on the left side of the body. These results support the view that the right hemisphere regulates the autonomic nervous system during arousal.     

Reducing automatically activated racial prejudice through implicit evaluative conditioning

The authors report a set of experiments that use an implicit evaluative conditioning procedure to reduce automatically activated racial prejudice in White participants in a short period and with relatively few trials. Experiment 1 demonstrated that participants were unaware of the repeated conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus (CS-US) pairings of Black-good and White-bad. In Experiment 2, the procedure was found to be effective in reducing prejudice as indicated by an evaluative priming measure of automatically activated racial attitudes. In Experiment 3, this reduction in prejudice was found to persist throughout a 2-day separation between the conditioning procedure and the administration of the dependent measure. The implications of the present findings for the persistence of automatically activated racial prejudice are discussed.     

The Structure of Female Subgroups: An Exploration of Ambivalent Stereotypes

The present research concerns the stereotypes associated with subgroups of women. Previous researchers have considered the ambivalent nature of stereotypes, particularly along the dimensions of warmth and competence (Glick, Diebold, Bailey-Werner, & Zhu, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23:1323–1334, 1997). In Study 1, we looked at the degree to which the superordinate social category of “women” is differentiated into distinct subgroups and whether warmth and competence are the primary dimensions of this differentiation. In Study 2, we assessed the degree to which businesswomen and homemakers are automatically associated with warmth and competence. Results showed that men and women differ in the valence associated with specific subgroups, and it is this valence, rather than stereotype content, that is automatically associated with these female subgroups.     

Processes leading to confidence and accuracy in sentence recognition: a metamemory approach

We propose that memory confidence is based on the processes and products of the just-completed memory task, along with the participants' metamemory beliefs about the relation of these processes and products to memory accuracy. We tested this metamemory approach to confidence by having participants carry out a simple recognition memory task with deceptive and nondeceptive items. The deceptive items were sentences that contained a possible synonym substitution, thus allowing errors based on gist memory. For nondeceptive items, high confidence was associated with high accuracy. For deceptive items the relationship reversed; high confidence was associated with low accuracy. A memory process questionnaire was developed that provided more differentiated phenomenal reports than the traditional know/remember distinction. For nondeceptive items, metamemory beliefs tended to be valid indicators of accuracy, but for deceptive items involving unconscious reconstructive memory processes, they tended to be invalid indicators of memory accuracy. The overall results lend strong support for our metamemory approach to memory confidence.     

Development and validation of a Coping with Discrimination Scale: factor structure, reliability, and validity

Four studies were conducted to develop and validate the Coping With Discrimination Scale (CDS). In Study 1, an exploratory factor analysis (N = 328) identified 5 factors: Education/Advocacy, Internalization, Drug and Alcohol Use, Resistance, and Detachment, with internal consistency reliability estimates ranging from .72 to .90. In Study 2, a confirmatory factor analysis (N = 328) provided cross-validation of the 5-factor model as well as evidence for validity of the scale. The validity evidence was similar across racial groups and for males and females. In Study 3, the estimated 2-week test-retest reliabilities (N = 53) were between .48 and .85 for the 5 factors. Education/Advocacy, Internalization, Drug and Alcohol Use, and Detachment were positively associated with active coping, self-blame, substance use, and behavioral disengagement, respectively, providing further support for validity of the CDS. Finally, incremental validity evidence was obtained in Study 4 (N = 220), where it was shown that the CDS explained variance in outcome variables (i.e., depression, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and ethnic identity) that could not be explained by general coping strategies.