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Background: Obesity has been shown to have many deleterious physical and psychological consequences. Objective: This study examined the effectiveness of adding the Life Enhancement and Advancement Program (LEAP) to a weight management program. Design: To evaluate the different components of a weight loss program, this study included four groups: (1) dieting, exercise, and LEAP; (2) dieting, exercise, and sham training; (3) dieting and exercise; and (4) exercise only. An assessment was administered at baseline, post-intervention, and a three-month follow-up. Participants: Forty female participants with a body mass index (BMI) ≥ 25 were recruited from a local sports center. They provided informed consent and were randomly assigned to one of the four groups. Measures: Participants' heights were recorded at baseline, and their weight, waist circumference (WC), and BMI were measured at each of the three assessments. Participants completed the Personal Concerns Inventory (PCI) to assess their adaptive motivation at all three assessments. Results: A MANCOVA indicated that participants who received LEAP along with dieting and exercise had a greater reduction in BMI and WC and improved more in adaptive motivation than the other groups. Conclusions: The results suggest that adding LEAP to a weight management program enhanced participants' ability to achieve and maintain weight loss. LEAP enabled participants to pursue and achieve their important goals successfully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study was conducted to examine relationships among university students' self-regulation, motivational structure, and alcohol consumption. Participants were student drinkers (N = 105, females = 77.7%, mean age = 19.82 years) who completed a demographics questionnaire, the Alcohol Use Questionnaire, Short Self-Regulation Questionnaire, and Personal Concern Inventory (PCI). Self-regulation was negatively correlated with the amount of alcohol that students drank on typical (p <.05) and atypical (p <.01) occasions. PCI adaptive motivation was also negatively correlated with typical (p <.05) and atypical (p <.05) drinking. Finally, adaptive motivation and self-regulation were positively correlated with each other (p <.05). The study demonstrates that self-regulation and motivational structure play an important role in university students' alcohol consumption. Interventions could be developed for experimentally manipulating these measures with the aim of reducing students' use of alcohol. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Decisions about using addictive substances are influenced by distractions by addiction-related stimuli, of which the user might be unaware. The addiction-Stroop task is a paradigm used to assess this distraction. The empirical evidence for the addiction-Stroop effect is critically reviewed, and meta-analyses of alcohol-related and smoking-related studies are presented. Studies finding the strongest effects were those in which participants had strong current concerns about an addictive substance or such concerns were highlighted through experimental manipulations, especially those depriving participants of the substance. Theories to account for addiction-related attentional bias are discussed, of which the motivational theory of current concerns appears to provide the most complete account of the phenomenon. Recommendations are made for maximizing the precision of the addiction-Stroop test in future research.

Background: There have been two kinds of methods for assessing individuals' motivation and their goal‐striving behavior. The idiographic method obtains respondents' individual descriptions of their behavior or inner experiences. The nomothetic approach uses a standardized questionnaire in which respondents select from a set of alternatives. Idiographic responses provide rich, individualized information, but they make comparisons across different individuals difficult. By contrast, the nomothetic approach loses valuable individualized information, but it readily lends itself to cross‐individual comparisons. Objective: The present authors have developed a family of motivational assessment instruments within the framework of the Goal Theory of Current Concerns and individuals' goal pursuits. Each of these instruments is a hybrid version of the idiographic and nomothetic methods. Each one obtains individualized information about each respondent at the start of the assessment, but it then utilizes rating scales that allow comparisons across different individuals to be made. The objective of the present article is to present this family of hybridized instruments for potential use in routine outcome monitoring. Method: The method used in this article was to review the development of this family of hybrid assessments instruments over the preceding decades and the research on their psychometric properties and clinical applications. These hybrid tools include the Interview Questionnaire, Work Concerns Inventory, Motivational Structure Questionnaire, and Personal Concerns Inventory and their variants. The review includes only the idiographic‐nomothetic approaches that are based on the Goal Theory of Current Concerns. Results: The review reveals that for each instrument, motivational indices are calculated, which have been shown to be valid and reliable. Analyses have also revealed adaptive and maladaptive motivational factors. Conclusions: The measures discussed here have proven useful in clinical applications, when, for example, they are used as components of Systematic Motivational Counseling and the Life Enhancement and Advancement Programme for helping individuals improve their motivational structure. Similarly, the measures hold promise for use in routine outcome monitoring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2006.02.023 Byline: W. Miles Cox, Steven G. Hosier, Sophie Crossley, Becky Kendall, Katherine L. Roberts Keywords: Motives for drinking; Alcohol consumption; Alcohol-related problem; Secondary-school students; University students; British students Abstract: Relationships among reasons for drinking, alcohol consumption, and drinking-related problems were assessed among secondary-school students (N =328) and university students (N =74) in North Wales, United Kingdom, and results were compared with results from North America. The ability of drinking reasons to predict drinking problems was tested in both age groups. Khavari Alcohol Test, Quantity-Frequency-Variability Index, Reasons for Drinking Questionnaire, and Rutgers Alcohol Problems Index were used to measure the variables of interest. Regression and mediational analyses indicated that negative reasons were stronger predictors of drinking problems than were positive reasons among both secondary-school and university students. Results also showed that the effect of both positive and negative drinking reasons on alcohol-related problems was partially mediated by alcohol consumption among both secondary-school students and university students. There were different correlates of problematic drinking among younger and older students, which suggest that different types of intervention should be used with the two age groups. Author Affiliation: University of Wales, Bangor, United Kingdom

Abstract Recent studies have investigated the rote of attentional biases and memory in alcohol and other drugs of dependence and the relationship between the motivation to use alcohol or other [...]

Decisions about using addictive substances are influenced by distractions by addiction-related stimuli, of which the user might be unaware. The addiction--Stroop task is a paradigm used to assess this distraction. The empirical evidence for the addiction--Stroop effect is critically reviewed, and meta-analyses of alcohol-related and smoking-related studies are presented. Studies finding the strongest effects were those in which participants had strong current concerns about an addictive substance or such concerns were highlighted through experimental manipulations, especially those depriving participants of the substance. Theories to account for addiction-related attentional bias are discussed, of which the motivational theory of current concerns appears to provide the most complete account of the phenomenon. Recommendations are made for maximizing the precision of the addiction-Stroop test in future research. Keywords: addiction, attentional bias, current concern, meta-analysis, Stroop