Comparison of cognitive failures in addicts and non addicts

Abstract

Cognition is one of the interesting areas of research in addiction field. There are many studies that attempt to explore the relationship between cognitive abilities and addiction. The relationship between cognitive failures and clinical and social outcomes in patients and addicts has been mentioned in many studies. It seems that cognitive impairment is one of the strong predictor of social dysfunction in addicted people. Cognitive failures are defined as inabilities to successfully perform tasks that one might typically be able to do on a daily basis. Some examples include forgetting appointments, leaving mail unanswered for days, failure to notice street signs, and having to reread passages of text. Such failures in everyday activities are due to underlying problems in general cognitive functions related to distractibility and memory. In general, cognitive failures include failures in perception, memory, and motor functioning, in which the action does not match the intention. Thus, cognitive failures include numerous types of execution lapses: lapses in attention (i.e., failure in perception), memory (i.e., failures related to information retrieval), and motor function (i.e., the performance of unintended actions, or action slips). While cognitive failures occur frequently and many do not produce any serious consequences, some — under specific circumstances — will result in unpleasant consequences, for example, accident. The goal of this study was to compare the cognitive component failure in addicted and non-addicted people. This study was causal-comparative. 45 addicted people (70%male), who have at least five years addiction history, selected from different counseling centers in Kerman, and were matched in terms of age, sex, and education level with 45 non-addicted people. After obtaining participants' consent, the cognitive failures questionnaire (CFQ) was completed by all two groups. MANOVA was used for the data analysis. The results showed that cognitive failures components, including distraction, failure of memory, oversight and forgetfulness of addicted people are significantly higher than non-addicted people. This study was conducted to compare cognitive failures in addicted and non-addicted people. The components of the cognitive failures in addicts and normal individuals were significantly different, which is probably a result of drug abuse. Not only these cognitive failures might be effective in drug abuse, but it seems they prevent from leaving addiction. Thus, correcting these failures may be helpful in treatment and prevention of recurrent addiction. Further research is needed to investigate the effect of this correcting on addiction.