New perspectives on the manipulation of opiate urges and the assessment of cognitive effort associated with opiate urges.

Behavioral models of drug urges assume that conditioned urges are strongly associated with drug consumption. An alternative, cognitive model assumes that urges represent the operation of cognitively demanding processes devoted to either supporting or blocking the automatized drug-use behavior. In Study 1, the effect of verbal drug cues and mood induction on self-reported opiate urges were examined. Twenty-four opiate addicts were either instructed to listen to verbal drug cures or neutral cues. Negative mood induction was applied on 12 addicts. Study 2 examined the cognitive processes underlying these urges. In a dual task paradigm, participants responded to a probe stimulus and listened simultaneously to an imagery script. It was predicted that response times to the probe should increase to the extent that urge-related nonautomatic processing is invoked. Although negative affect was not associated with nonautomatic processing, the findings suggest that drug urges can be activated by drug cues and that cue-related urges are supported by nonautomatic cognitive processes.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes