Cognitive Biases in Alcohol and Marijuana Users

The current study investigated the influence of marijuana and alcohol consumption and craving on a primed word stem completion (WSC) task. One hundred participants were randomly assigned to one of three prime conditions: Substance-prime, neutral-prime, and no-prime. In the substance- and neutral-prime conditions, participants were presented with a series of prime words. After a distracter task those participants who were presented with a series of prime words, all participants were given a multi-solution WSC task, which consisted of the initial two to four letters of a word for which the participants were instructed to complete with the first word that came to mind. The numbers of substance-related and neutral-prime solutions that were produced by each participant were tallied to produce a score. Participants were then further instructed to complete measures of alcohol and marijuana consumption and craving and these measures were used as covariates in a MANCOVA analysis. The primes had a significant effect on performance in the WSC task, with the substance-prime increasing the number of alcohol- and marijuana-related word solutions compared to the neutral- and no-prime conditions. Alcohol consumption significantly influenced the production of alcohol-related word solutions, but neither marijuana consumption nor craving was associated with the production of marijuana-related word solutions. These results demonstrate that both priming and past alcohol use significantly influenced performance on a WSC task, indicating the presence, at least in part, of a cognitive bias in those who use alcohol.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Experimental Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2017

Author dc:creator

• Frahm, Wyatt G.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kara Gabriel
• Susan Lonborg
• Mary Radeke

• Alcohol
• Marijuana
• Cognitive bias
• Word stem completion task
• substance use
• Cognitive Psychology
• Psychology
• Social and Behavioral Sciences

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/701

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.cwu.edu:etd-1715