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Congratulations to the following:
Ali Yurasek was awarded a $5,000 grant from the 3rd Millennium Classrooms foundation
to evaluate a recently-developed computerized intervention for alcohol abuse.
Joanna Buscemi received a postdoctoral research fellowship at Northwestern University
in Chicago.
Claudia McCausland received a postdoctoral fellowship at the Memphis VA Medical Center.
Jessica Skidmore is currently interning at the University of California, San Diego/Veterans
Affairs.
Ali Yurasek was appointed to the APA Division 38 Communications Student Council position.
The HABIT Laboratory conducts research related to addiction and health that is consistent
with two primary goals. First, we strive to conduct research that addresses important
public health priorities. For example, alcohol abuse among young adults results in
thousands of injuries, assaults, and fatalities each year, and can set the stage for
a lifelong pattern of alcohol abuse and/or dependence. We have conducted several controlled
clinical trials that have demonstrated that brief interventions incorporating motivational
interviewing and personalized drinking feedback can reduce heavy drinking among young
adults (including both college students and military veterans). These interventions
are now being adopted across the country and are replacing previous models of “alcohol
education” that were not efficacious. Recently, we were funded by NIAAA to improve
standard brief alcohol intervention by adding a behavioral economic supplement that
encouraged engagement in constructive alternatives associated with delayed reinforcement.
Although we are primarily interested in conducting research related to alcohol and
drug abuse, we are also interested in studying other health-compromising behaviors
such as risky sexual behavior and smoking, as well as health-promoting behaviors such
as diet and exercise. Finally, we are interested in understanding how risk factors
such as impulsivity, high alcohol demand or reinforcing value, and comorbidity (depression,
PTSD) are related to both poor treatment response and the development of chronic substance
abuse problems/addiction.
The second overarching goal of the HABIT Laboratory is to conduct applied clinical
research that is influenced by basic behavioral and biological research (e.g., translational
research) and contributes to the overall goal of improving our scientific understanding
of human behavior. For example, we have used behavioral economic theory and basic
laboratory research to guide our applied research on substance abuse etiology, assessment,
and prevention. Behavioral economic theory predicts that (1) increasing substance-free
sources of reinforcement will reduce substance use, (2) proportional reinforcement
from substance use relative to substance-free activities (i.e., relative reinforcing
value) is an important index of drug problem severity, and (3) strong preference for
immediate versus delayed reinforcement (i.e., delayed reward discounting) may be an
important risk factor for addiction. We are interested in understanding how these
behavioral mechanisms contribute to the development of substance abuse, and also in
ways in which they can be targeted in novel behavioral interventions.
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