If the data contradict the theory, throw out the data: Nicotine addiction in the 2010 report of the Surgeon General

The reports of US Surgeon General on smoking are considered the authoritative statement on the scientific state of the art in this field. The previous report on nicotine addiction published in 1988 is one of the most cited references in scientific articles on smoking and often the only citation provided for specific statements of facts regarding nicotine addiction. In this commentary we review the chapter on nicotine addiction presented in the recent report of the Surgeon General. We show that the nicotine addiction model presented in this chapter, which closely resembles its 22 years old predecessor, could only be sustained by systematically ignoring all contradictory evidence. As a result, the present SG's chapter on nicotine addiction, which purportedly "documents how nicotine compares with heroin and cocaine in its hold on users and its effects on the brain," is remarkably biased and misleading

Can one puff really make an adolescent addicted to nicotine? A critical review of the literature

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Rationale</p> <p>In the past decade, there have been various attempts to understand the initiation and progression of tobacco smoking among adolescents. One line of research on these issues has made strong claims regarding the speed in which adolescents can become physically and mentally addicted to smoking. According to these claims, and in contrast to other models of smoking progression, adolescents can lose autonomy over their smoking behavior after having smoked one puff in their lifetime and never having smoked again, and can become mentally and physically "hooked on nicotine" even if they have never smoked a puff.</p> <p>Objectives</p> <p>To critically examine the conceptual and empirical basis for the claims made by the "hooked on nicotine" thesis.</p> <p>Method</p> <p>We reviewed the major studies on which the claims of the "hooked on nicotine" research program are based.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The studies we reviewed contained substantive conceptual and methodological flaws. These include an untenable and idiosyncratic definition of addiction, use of single items or of very lenient criteria for diagnosing nicotine dependence, reliance on responders' causal attributions in determining physical and mental addiction to nicotine and biased coding and interpretation of the data.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>The conceptual and methodological problems detailed in this review invalidate many of the claims made by the "hooked on nicotine" research program and undermine its contribution to the understanding of the nature and development of tobacco smoking in adolescents.</p

A Possible Link between Supra-Second Open-Ended Timing Sensitivity and Obsessive-Compulsive Tendencies

One of the main characteristics of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is the persistent feeling of uncertainty, affecting many domains of actions and feelings. It was recently hypothesized that OCD uncertainty is related to attenuated access to internal states. As supra-second timing is associated with bodily and interoceptive awareness, we examined whether supra-second timing would be associated with OC tendencies. We measured supra-second (~9 s) and sub-second (~450 ms) timing along with control non-temporal perceptual tasks in a group of 60 university students. Supra-second timing was measured either with fixed criterion tasks requiring to temporally discriminate between two predefined fixed interval durations (9 vs. 9.9 s), or with an open-ended task requiring to discriminate between 9 s and longer intervals which were of varying durations that were not a priori known to the participants. The open-ended task employed an adaptive Bayesian procedure that efficiently estimated the duration difference required to discriminate 9 s from longer intervals. We also assessed symptoms of OCD, depression, and anxiety. Open-ended supra-second temporal sensitivity was correlated with OC tendencies, as predicted (even after controlling for depression and anxiety), whereas the other tasks were not. Higher OC tendencies were associated with lower timing sensitivity to 9 s intervals such that participants with higher OC tendency scores required longer interval differences to discriminate 9 s from longer intervals. While these results need to be substantiated in future research, they suggest that open-ended timing tasks, as those encountered in real-life (e.g., estimating how long it would take to complete a task), might be adversely affected in OCD

Comorbidity Between Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Across the Lifespan: A Systematic and Critical Review

Abstract The concept of comorbidity between attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) has been discussed for two decades. No review, however, has examined this question in light of the stark contrast in disorder-specific phenomenology and neurobiology. We review reported prevalence rates and the methodological, phenomenological, and theoretical issues concerning concomitant ADHD-OCD. Reported co-occurrence rates are highly inconsistent in the literature. Studies aimed at examining the potential for comorbidity have suffered from various methodological problems, including the existence of very few community samples, highly variable exclusionary criteria, and possible clinical misinterpretation of symptoms. Despite numerous studies suggesting an ADHD-OCD comorbidity, thus far etiological (i.e., genetic) backing has been provided only for a pediatric comorbidity. Additionally, inflated rates of ADHD-OCD co-occurrence may be mediated by the presence of tic disorders, and evidence of impaired neuronal maturational processes in pediatric OCD may lead to possibly transient phenotypical expressions that resemble ADHD symptomatology. Thus, clinicians are encouraged to consider the possibility that ADHD-like symptoms resulting from OCD-specific symptomatology may be misdiagnosed as ADHD. This suggestion may account for the lower co-occurrence rates reported in adolescents and adults and for the lack of a theoretical account for comorbidity in these age groups. Existing literature is summarized and critically reviewed, and recommendations are made for future research

Cognitive motivations for the initiation of ritualistic hand washing in obsessive-compulsive disorder

There is little research on cognitive factors that characterize the initiation of compulsive washing in obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD). The present study seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the goals that are salient at the start of compulsive hand washing. Thirty-eight individuals diagnosed with OCD with predominantly hand-washing compulsions and two comparison groups, one with 41 individuals diagnosed with OCD without washing compulsions and one with 43 nonclinical individuals, were interviewed about a situation when they needed to wash their hands. Participants’ goals for the wash and step-by-step descriptions of the wash were categorized and compared between groups. Findings indicate that some factors involved in the maintenance and termination of a compulsive wash might already be established at the outset of the wash, such as goals being characterized by higher levels of abstractness and importance for participants with predominantly hand-washing compulsions compared to controls. Number of goals was associated with number of repetitions of the compulsive wash. Individuals with hand-washing compulsions might have goals in mind right from the start of the wash that are very difficult to reach. If our findings are confirmed in future studies, therapeutic implications could include exploring the adaptiveness of having abstract goals and their exaggerated importance

Obsessive Compulsive visual search: a reexamination of presence-absence asymmetries

In previous research, obsessive-compulsive tendencies were associated with longer search times in visual-search tasks. These findings, replicated and extended to a clinical sample, were specific to target-absent trials, with no effect on target-present trials. This selectivity was interpreted as checking behavior in response to mild uncertainty. However, an alternative interpretation is that individuals with high obsessive-compulsive (OC+) tendencies have a specific difficulty with inference about absence. In two large-scale, preregistered, online experiments (conceptual replication: N = 1,007; direct replication: N = 226), we sought to replicate the original finding and elucidate its underlying cause: an increased sensitivity to mild uncertainty or a selective deficiency in inference about absence. Both experiments showed no evidence of prolonged search times in target-absent trials for OC+ individuals. Taken together, our results do not support the notion that inducing mild uncertainty in the form of target absence leads to excessive checking among OC+ individuals