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Understanding and Shifting Drug-Related Decisions: Contributions of Automatic Decision-Making Processes

  • Substance Use and Related Disorders (F Levin and E Dakwar, Section Editors)
  • Published:
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Abstract

While substance use is common, only a minority of individuals who use drugs or alcohol develop problematic use. An understanding of the factors underlying the transition from substance use to misuse may improve prevention and intervention efforts. A key feature of substance misuse is ongoing decisions to use drugs or alcohol despite escalating negative consequences. Research findings highlight the importance of both relatively automatic, associative cognitive processes and relatively controlled, deliberative, and rational-analytic cognitive processes, for understanding situational decisions to use drugs. In this review, we discuss several cognitive component processes that may contribute to decision-making that promotes substance use and misuse, with a focus on more automatic processes. A growing body of evidence indicates that relative differences in the strength of these component processes can account for individual differences in the transition from substance use to misuse and may offer important avenues for developing novel intervention strategies.

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Notes

  1. The reader is referred to a special issue of CNS Spectrums (2014, 40) that covers many of these points on attentional bias in greater depth.

  2. It should be noted that a methodological characteristic that varies across studies of impulsivity but was beyond the scope of this review to explore, is the tangibility of the task rewards (i.e., hypothetical or real). Burgeoning evidence indicates that the performance of substance users on impulsivity tasks, and the associated neural response differs along this axis (e.g., 79. Vadhan NP, Hart CL, Haney M, van Gorp WG, Foltin RW. Decision-making in long-term cocaine users: Effects of a cash monetary contingency on Gambling task performance. Drug and alcohol dependence. 2009;102(1–3):95–101. 80•. Hulka LM, Eisenegger C, Preller KH, Vonmoos M, Jenni D, Bendrick K, et al. Altered social and nonsocial decision making in recreational and dependent cocaine users. Psychological medicine. 2014;44(5):1015–28, 81. Chung T, Geier C, Luna B, Pajtek S, Terwilliger R, Thatcher D, et al. Enhancing response inhibition by incentive: comparison of adolescents with and without substance use disorder. Drug and alcohol dependence. 2011;115(1–2):43–50.). It remains to be seen whether ecological validity and clinical relevance also differ in a similar fashion.

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Kenneth M. Carpenter, Gillinder Bedi, and Nehal P. Vadhan declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University Medical Center, Center for Motivation and Change, Division on Substance Abuse, New York State Psychiatric Institute, 1051 Riverside Drive, MC 120, New York, NY, 10032, USA

    Kenneth M. Carpenter

  2. Division on Substance Abuse, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, 1051 Riverside Drive, MC 120, New York, NY, 10032, USA

    Gillinder Bedi

  3. Department of Psychiatry, Stony Brook University School of Medicine, Health Sciences Tower 10-040K, Stony Brook, NY, 11794-8101, USA

    Nehal P. Vadhan

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  1. Kenneth M. Carpenter
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Correspondence to Kenneth M. Carpenter.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on Substance Use and Related Disorders

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Carpenter, K.M., Bedi, G. & Vadhan, N.P. Understanding and Shifting Drug-Related Decisions: Contributions of Automatic Decision-Making Processes. Curr Psychiatry Rep 17, 65 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11920-015-0607-8

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