Biomedical subjects

A Cepeda-Benito

Publications and source records attributed to A Cepeda-Benito.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2001

The effects of child sexual abuse: Comment on Rind, Tromovitch, and Bauserman (1998).

B. Rind, P. Tromovitch, and R. Bauserman (1998) examined the long-term effects of childhood sexual abuse (CSA) by meta-analyzing studies of college students. The authors reported that effects "were neither pervasive nor typically intense" and that "men reacted much less negatively than women" (p. 22) and recommended value-neutral reconceptualization of the CSA construct. The current analysis revealed numerous problems in that study that minimized CSA-adjustment relations, including use of a healthy sample, an inclusive definition of CSA, failure to correct for statistical attenuation, and misreporting of original data. Rind et al.'s study's main conclusions were not supported by the original data. As such, attempts to use their study to argue that an individual has not been harmed by sexual abuse constitute a serious misapplication of its findings.

Adaptation, Psychological↗

PubMed2001

The reliability and validity of a group-administered version of the body image assessment.

The Body Image Assessment (BIA) is a simple measure of body image disturbance. However, it has currently only been used with an individual administration format and only to assess ratings of current body size, ideal body size, and body dissatisfaction. It has also only been validated for use with women. In the current two studies, the reliability and validity of a group-administered version of the BIA procedure for both men and women that also assessed ratings of the ideal opposite sex and predictions about what the opposite sex would prefer as most attractive was examined. In the first study, results indicated good test-retest reliability for the group version for current and ideal body size and good concurrent validity with the individual administration format of the BIA. The results of the second study supported the construct and predictive validity of the group administered BIA, suggesting that it is a time-efficient alternative to the original, individually administered assessment.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

The development and validation of Spanish versions of the State and Trait Food Cravings Questionnaires.

OBJECTIVE: We developed and tested the psychometric properties of Spanish versions of the Trait and State Food Cravings Questionnaires (FCQ-T and FCQ-S respectively). METHOD: The instruments were translated and adapted to Spanish and administered to undergraduate students from a Southern university in Spain (N = 271). The data were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis to compare the factor structure of the English and Spanish versions of both questionnaires. RESULTS: The factors structure of both questionnaires obtained excellent fit indices across their Spanish versions with the one exception that some factors of the FCQ-S were more highly intercorrelated among the Spanish sample than the American. DISCUSSION: This study supports the conceptualization of food cravings as universal multidimensional motivational states that can be reliably measured and supports the use of the Spanish versions of the FCQ.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

Smoking Consequences Questionnaire--Spanish.

A total of 212 Spanish smokers completed a Spanish version of a smoking questionnaire based on the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire--Adult (A. L. Copeland, T. H. Brandon, & E. P. Quinn, 1995) and a nicotine dependence (ND) measure. Confirmatory factor analysis results supported an a priori defined 8-factor structure. The results also indicated good internal consistency for the instrument and the scales derived from each factor. Positive outcome smoking expectancies scales were significantly and substantially associated with ND scores. Also, after controlling for the influence of ND, the authors found higher smoking expectancies in women than in men in (a) weight control, (b) craving reduction and addictiveness, and (c) negative-affect reduction. The results support the instrument's construct validity.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2000

Cross-ethnic equivalence of the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-21 in European American, African American, and Latino college students.

To determine if the Hopkins Symptom Checklist-21 demonstrates equivalent validity across different ethnic groups, the authors tested the factor structure of the instrument with a sample of European American (n = 514), African American (n = 154), and Latino (n = 229) college students using confirmatory factor analysis with tests of invariance across groups. For the most part, a 3-factor model with Performance, General, and Somatic factors fit equally well for all 3 racial/ethnic groups. Differences involved only a few items in terms of either the strength of a factor loading or an error term. The results generally support the validity of the use of the instrument for measurement of distress in these different racial/ethnic groups.

Adult↗

PubMed1999

Context-specific morphine tolerance on the paw-pressure and tail-shock vocalization tests: evidence of associative tolerance without conditioned compensatory responding.

RATIONALE: Demonstrations of associative tolerance to the analgesic effects of morphine, not confounded by practice or novelty effects, have been restricted to the tail-flick and flinch-jump tests. OBJECTIVES: Experiment 1 investigated whether associative tolerance would be found on two other nociceptive assessment methods: the paw-pressure withdrawal and tail-shock vocalization thresholds. Experiment 2 tested the hypothesis that conditioned compensatory behavioral responses are the substrate of associative morphine tolerance in the paw-pressure, tail-shock, and tail-flick tests. METHODS: Rats were given eight morphine injections (20 mg/kg, i.p.) explicitly paired or unpaired with a distinctive context. Control animals were given saline injections over the course of conditioning. Animals were then tested after morphine (experiment 1) or placebo injections (experiment 2) in the context. RESULTS: There was evidence of context-specific tolerance across both testing methods, with a rightward shift of dose-response curves of paired relative to unpaired animals. No evidence of conditioned compensatory responding was found on any of the three testing methods. CONCLUSIONS: The data indicated that, although Pavlovian processes can play a major role in tolerance acquisition, there was little support for the thesis that the conditioned tolerance response is a behavioral effect that is opposite in direction to the direct effects of the drug.

Analgesics, Opioid↗

PubMed1998

Associative tolerance to nicotine analgesia in the rat: tail-flick and hot-plate tests.

Previous assessments of associative nicotine tolerance may have confounded associative effects with novelty-induced stress effects, instrumental learning effects, or both. That is, subjects were tested in novel environments, allowed to practice the test response, or both during the tolerance development phase. In the first study, 32 male Sprague-Dawley rats were injected with various doses of nicotine and tested for nociception in the tail-flick and hot-plate tests to assess nicotine's analgesic effects. In the second study, 35 rats received nicotine explicitly paired or unpaired with a distinctive test context. All animals were equally preexposed to the test environment, and none had the opportunity to practice the test response. Paired rats developed greater nicotine tolerance than unpaired rats. This context-dependent (associative) tolerance effect was found with both tail-flick and hot-plate tests.

Animals↗

PubMed1996

The use of a dual-task procedure for the assessment of cognitive effort associated with cigarette craving.

Two experiments used a dual-task procedure to investigate Tiffany's (1990) proposal that drug craving should disrupt activities that demand nonautomatic cognitive processing. The primary task required smokers to imagine sentences that incorporated urge or no-urge descriptors. During imagery, the subjects also responded to a secondary reaction time (RT) task. Additional dependent variables collected during the imagery manipulation included craving report, mood report, heart rate (HR), and skin conductance levels (SCL). In study 1, imagery of urge sentences produced slower probe RTs and increases in HR and SCL, greater urge and negative mood reports, and lower positive mood ratings. This same pattern of results was replicated in the second study, which utilized sentence types more closely matched on no-urge content. These results support Tiffany's (1990) cognitive processing theory and suggest an innovative approach to the investigation of drug craving.

Adult↗

PubMed1996

Unsignaled morphine delivery does not disrupt the development of associative morphine tolerance in the rat.

When morphine administration is paired with a distinctive context, tolerance to morphine's analgesic effects comes readily under the associative control of the drug-paired context. These associative tolerance effects are eliminated when a relatively short (i.e., 6 h) interdose interval (IDI) is used for conditioning. Contemporary models of learned tolerance explain the absence of learning at short IDIs by positing that residual morphine effects from a recent drug exposure disrupt the formation of drug-context associations. The present studies examined the impact of unsignaled morphine injections given 6 h prior to drug-context pairings on the development of associative tolerance. Analgesia was measured by the tail-flick method, and tolerance levels were assessed by dose-response curve methodology. Morphine preexposure had no detectable influence on the acquisition of associative tolerance when rats were tested immediately after conditioning, after a 30-day rest interval, or after a 30-day period of daily saline injections in their home-cage environment. These data suggest disruption of associative tolerance effects at short IDIs is not attributable to residual effects of morphine from the immediately preceding trial.

Animals↗

PubMed1995

Role of drug-administration cues in the associative control of morphine tolerance in the rat.

This research investigated the role of injection procedures as a potential confound in the study of associative and nonassociative morphine tolerance development. Rats administered a series of morphine injections paired with a distinctive context environment can develop tolerance controlled associatively by the context. However, rats given morphine unpaired with the context may also develop some degree of tolerance. This study examined whether this tolerance represents an associative effect with animals using the injection ritual as a cue predictive of morphine delivery. Following 14 days of habituation to handling and injection stimuli, rats were given eight morphine injections (20 mg/kg, IP) explicitly paired or unpaired with a distinctive context. Animals were then tested for morphine analgesia in the context after either a 30-day rest condition or a 30-day period of daily saline injections. Analgesia was assessed by the tail-flick method, and tolerance was defined as the shift to the right of the dose-response curve of morphine-experienced relative to saline control animals. Paired animals across both retention conditions displayed tolerance, whereas tolerance retention in unpaired animals was observed only in those animals not given saline injections over the 30-day interval. Results support an associative interpretation of tolerance observed in unpaired conditions and suggest that the injection ritual may provide highly salient cues for the support of associative tolerance effects.

Analgesia↗

PubMed1993

Morphine as a cue in associative tolerance to morphine's analgesic effects.

This study examined the extent to which low doses of morphine paired explicitly with high doses would gain associative control over tolerance development in rats. Tolerance development was assessed by evaluating dose-response curves to the analgesic effects of morphine on the tail-flick test. The results indicated that tolerance development was not influenced by the pairing of low doses with high doses.

Analgesics↗

PubMed1993

Meta-analytical review of the efficacy of nicotine chewing gum in smoking treatment programs.

The research on the effectiveness of nicotine gum as a treatment for smoking was reviewed through a meta-analysis of 33 studies. The differential effectiveness of experimental (nicotine gum) versus control (placebo and no gum) groups at both short- and long-term follow-up was indexed as d, the mean effect size. These effect sizes were contrasted within each brief and intensive treatments. Nicotine gum was superior to placebo and no-gum controls at both intervals with the intensive strategies, but the gum was effective only at short term for the brief treatments. Results show that the positive effects of nicotine gum in smoking treatment are a function of an interaction between the gum's pharmacological properties and the effectiveness of intensive treatment strategies. The theoretical and clinical implications of the results are discussed.

Chewing Gum↗

PubMed1992

Effect of number of conditioning trials on the development of associative tolerance to morphine.

The acquisition of associative tolerance to the analgesic effects of morphine was investigated by giving independent groups of rats 1, 3, 5, 8, 14, 20, or 30 administrations of drug either explicitly paired or unpaired with a distinctive context. Tolerance, assessed on a tail-flick device using dose-response curve (DRC) methodology, developed more rapidly and reached greater magnitude when morphine and the distinctive context were explicitly paired rather than explicitly unpaired. Tolerance magnitude in both conditions reached a maximum at eight conditioning sessions. It is argued that the tolerance found in both treatment groups was associatively controlled. The function of handling and injection cues as conditioned stimuli, and the deleterious effects of latent inhibition and partial reinforcement on conditioned excitation and conditioned inhibition are discussed.

Analgesics↗

PubMed1992

Contribution of associative and nonassociative processes to the development of morphine tolerance.

The contribution of associative and nonassociative processes to the development of tolerance to the analgesic effects of morphine in rats was investigated in two experiments. Associative contingencies were manipulated by administering a series of moderately high morphine doses (20 mg/kg) either explicitly paired or explicitly unpaired with a distinctive context. During distinctive context exposures, animals were placed for 60 min in plastic boxes located in a room adjacent to the colony room. The distinctiveness of this environment was enhanced by the presence of white noise and a pine scent. Nonassociative processes were manipulated by administering the morphine at either a very short (6 h) or relatively long (96 h) interdose-interval (IDI). Analgesia was measured on a tail-flick test. At the 96 h IDI, tolerance, as indexed by shifts in dose-response curves, was controlled primarily by associative processes. Associative control over tolerance at the long IDI was evident at an immediate test (experiment 1) and was retained for a 30 day interval (experiment 2). In contrast, tolerance that developed at the 6 h IDI was not influenced by associative contingencies at the immediate test (experiment 1) and showed no retention over a 30 day interval (experiment 2). These data suggest that tolerance that developed at the short IDI was nonassociative. Overall, the results indicate that conditions conductive to the development of non-associative tolerance disrupt the acquisition of associative tolerance. Hypotheses regarding the absence of associative effects at the short IDI are reviewed. Methodological implications of these results for evaluations of associative and nonassociative morphine tolerance are also discussed.

Animals↗