Maladaptive habits, such as substance use, that are highly ingrained and automatized behaviors with negative long-term health consequences need effective interventions to promote change towards more healthful behaviors. Implementation intentions, the structured linking of critical situations and alternative, healthier responses, have been shown to improve health-benefiting behaviors such as eating more fruits and vegetables and being more physically active (Sheeran, Milne, Webb, and Gollwitzer, 2005). Here, a laboratory analogue for smoking relapse and a pilot clinical trial of alcohol use are assessed using implementation intention interventions to reduce these health risk behaviors.
In Study 1, heavy smokers completed a smoking resistance task that is a candidate analogue for smoking relapse. Participants were exposed to an in-laboratory implementation intention and/or monetary incentive condition during each of four experimental sessions. The combined implementation intention and monetary incentive condition resulted in the greatest delay to smoking initiation. In Study 2, individuals with alcohol use disorder completed an active or control implementation intention treatment condition. Remotely, both treatment groups received a daily ecological momentary intervention, thrice daily biologic breath alcohol ecological momentary assessments, and once daily self-report ecological momentary assessment of alcohol consumption during the intervention period. The active implementation intention group was associated with a greater reduction in alcohol consumption compared to the control group.
Together, these studies provide experimental and initial clinical evidence for implementation intentions, in conjunction with other effective treatments (Study 1) and technological advancements (Study 2), to intervene on and reduce substance use. This project is the first to use implementation intentions in a laboratory evaluation of smoking resistance and in an initial clinical trial to reduce alcohol consumption in a naturalistic community sample using both ecological momentary assessments and ecological momentary interventions. / Ph. D. / The following studies provide evidence for the use of implementation intentions, a planning-based intervention, to reduce health risk behaviors. Implementation intentions are structured if-then statements that help individuals to identify critical situations where health risk behaviors are likely and to predetermine alternative and healthier responses when these situations are encountered. In the first study, nicotine-deprived cigarette smokers completed a laboratory task where they were asked to resist smoking. The participants were exposed to different conditions (implementation intentions and monetary incentives) to help them to resist smoking. The study found that the combination of both implementation intentions and monetary incentives were associated with the longest time to smoking reinitiation; however, the combination of both interventions was not significantly greater than monetary incentives alone. The second study employed implementation intentions as a strategy to reduce alcohol use over a two-week period in individuals with alcohol use disorder. The study found that implementation intentions reduced the amount of alcohol consumed on days where participants were drinking and these reductions were maintained at one-month follow-up. Together, these two studies provide support for translational work that evaluates interventions in the laboratory and then also in clinical trials. Furthermore, these studies show the trans-disease applications of interventions such as implementation intentions across health risk behaviors.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/85569 |
| Date | 04 May 2017 |
| Creators | Moody, Lara |
| Contributors | Psychology, Bickel, Warren K., Stephens, Robert S., Franck, Christopher T., Clum, George A. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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