Investigating the effects of a craving induction procedure on cognitive bias in cannabis users

Abstract

In tobacco smokers and heavy drinkers, the manipulation of subjective craving influences the biased cognitive processing of substance-related cues. In the present study, we used a within-subjects design to examine the effects of a cannabis craving-induction procedure (imagery scripts and cannabis-related videos) on craving and cognitive biases for cannabis cues, in a sample of regular cannabis users (N = 33). Results indicated that the craving induction procedure produced the predicted increases in subjective craving (as assessed with the Marijuana Craving Questionnaire), although the effect size was small and effects were not maintained for the duration of the laboratory session. Although cognitive biases (attentional, approach, and perceived pleasantness) were observed for cannabis-related cues relative to control stimuli, these were not significantly influenced by the craving manipulation. Theoretical implications and methodological issues are discussed.

• Cannabis
• cognitive bias
• attentional bias
• craving

Acknowledgement

This research was funded by a research grant from the British Academy (reference LRG-37196), awarded to Matt Field, Karin Mogg and Brendan P. Bradley.

Notes

Notes

1. The MCQ and single-item ‘urge to smoke cannabis’ VAS yielded similar findings, and so for the sake of brevity, only findings from the MCQ are reported.

2. The diary was included in order to investigate a secondary aim of the present study, which was to explore the relationships between cognitive bias and prospective cannabis use (cf. Cox et al. 2007). However, we were unable to recruit enough participants to investigate this issue with sufficient statistical power, so the results are not presented here. We note here that there were no significant relationships between cognitive bias and prospective cannabis use, after prior cannabis use had been statistically controlled (all p's > 0.1).

3. We initially included session order (craving induction session first/neutral induction session first) as a further between-subjects factor in all analyses. However, this factor produced no significant interactions with session type, so it was dropped from the analyses reported here. We also included self-reported cannabis use ('joints’ smoked in the previous week, log transformed before analysis to reduce skewness) as a covariate in initial analyses, but this did not influence the primary findings, so it was not included as a covariate in the analyses reported here.