Publication Abstract Display
Type: Published Abstract
Title: Substance use alters response to a prospective memory task importance manipulation in young adults living with HIV disease.
Authors: Woods SP, Doyle KL, Weber E, Outlaw AY, Nichols S, Naar-King S, Loft S
Year: 2013
Publication: 4th International Conference on Prospective Memory
Volume: Issue: Pages:
Abstract:HIV disease is associated with deficits in the strategic aspects of event-based prospective memory (PM), but little is known about the impact of comorbid substance use disorders (SUD), which can also adversely affect PM. We examined 58 young HIV+ subjects, 33 of whom were at risk for SUD as measured by the Alcohol, Smoking and Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST). All subjects completed three conditions of an ongoing lexical decision task: 1) baseline without PM instructions; 2) with PM instructions that emphasized the relative importance of the ongoing task; and 3) with PM instructions that emphasized the relative importance of the PM task. Both HIV+ groups showed the expected step-wise increase in response costs to the ongoing task in association with increasing monitoring PM demands (ps>.01). There was a significant interaction between SUD group and task importance (p<.05), whereby HIV+ youth with SUD showed a significant effect of PM task importance (p<.05) that was not observed in HIV+ non-SUD youth (p>.10), who performed better than the SUD group in the low (p<.05) but not high (p>.10) PM task importance conditions. Findings suggest that HIV+ young adults with SUD are able to allocate attentional resources to modestly improve event-based PM performance.

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