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Impaired Decision-Making

Decent Essays

Impaired Decision Making Related to Working Memory Deficits in Individuals With Substance Addictions
Theoretical Rationale
Attentional biases are individually experienced by substance users, it also interacts with a variety of other areas of their own subjective experience, like craving when faced directly with a substance or the thought of. The theoretical models of addiction propose that attentional bias for substance related prompts should be associated with self-reported craving. The purpose of this article was to analyze specific nature and association in correlation with an individual’s craving and attentional bias. If there is indeed an association between the two variables, this would be monumental and have many implications for future …show more content…

The inattention and distraction that takes over the activity in the hippocampus significantly impairs memory, encoding and the formulation of the declarative memory. Therefore, in this study the declarative memory comes into play for remembering “what”. The alcoholic is particularly impaired in the encoding part of the episodic memory, recall and short term (working) memory from which is described as the “scratch pad” for temporary memory recall. The prefrontal cortex in the front of the brain plays a pivotal role in short term and working memory, this is where initiation and regulation of cognitive and behavioral responses happen
(Abernathy, 2010). Working memory includes several components, for example, short-term storage, rehearsal, and executive processes operating on the contents of storage (Smith, 2000).
Research questions being asked in the study.
Do alcoholics have difficulties in associative memory which is part of episodic memory? Will alcoholics have issues with daily living and functioning in relation to memory? Since short term memory is a temporary storage of information that eventually turns into long term memory, does the alcoholic have issues in this area?
Experimental design and the findings of the …show more content…

Alcoholics were less likely to accurately recall the correct face name pattern and had troubles remembering which face they had seen earlier in the task. These impaired memory abilities will result in the alcoholic to have harmful consequences while trying to live out daily activities such as, going to work and day to day functioning. The researchers also state that memory disorders may result in family conflicts because it may seem as the individual is disinterested in family life. Finally, impaired episodic memory may hinder the alcoholic from getting the optimal benefits from a treatment facility because rehabilitation would mean learning new things such as, self-awareness through understanding and evaluation of the causes, triggers, environmental attributes of their addiction. Another area discussed in this article was short term memory and the alcoholic, it seems this researcher found that an alcoholic had trouble remembering a number while dialing

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