Eric Klinger

A motivational model of alcohol use

The final, common pathway to alcohol use is motivational. A person decides consciously or uncon-sciously to consume or not to consume any particular drink of alcohol according to whether or nothe or she expects that the positive affective consequences of drinking will outweigh those of notdrinking. Various factors (e.g., past experiences with drinking, current life situation) help to formexpectations of affective change from drinking, these factors always modulated by a persons neuro-chemical reactivity to alcohol. Such major influences include the persons current nonchemicalincentives and the prospect of acquiring new positive incentives and removing current negative in-centives. Our motivational counseling technique uses nonchemical goals and incentives to help thealcoholic develop a satisfying life without the necessity of alcohol. The technique first assesses thealcoholics motivational structure and then seeks to modify it through a multicomponent counselingprocedure. The counseling technique is one example of the heuristic value of the motiva-tional model.This article presents a motivational formulation of alcoholuse. The formulation is intended to incorporate advances madein understanding the inheritable constitutional factors (e.g.,Goodwin, in press; Schuckit, Li, Cloninger, & Deitrich, 1985)and the appetitive systems (T. B. Baker, Morse, & Sherman,1987) in alcohol-related behavior, and also the array of othermotivational factors that are increasingly recognized to play de-cisive roles in understanding and treating addictive behaviorpatterns (e.g., Klinger, 1977; Marlatt & Gordon, 1985; Miller,1985). The particular benefit of this formulation is to place al-coholic behavior in the context of contemporary theory of mo-tivation and emotion, as they relate both to alcohol use in thenarrow sense and to the life context in which the alcoholic con-tinually makes choices between drinking and alternative ac-tions. The formulation thereby suggests additional contributoryfactors, treatment strategies, and conceptual approaches.Despite the fact that there are multiple factors that influencedrinking, the final common pathway to alcohol use is, in ourview, motivational. The net motivation to drink, moreover, isclosely tied to peoples incentives in other life areas and to theaffective changes that they derive from their incentives. We be-gin, therefore, by defining incentive motivation and affectivechange and showing how these two concepts are related to peo-ples use of alcohol.

Modes of Normal Conscious Flow

When we speak of consciousness we are referring to the sum total of events in awareness. The term by no means exhausts the realm of things psychological, but it does encompass all of an individual’s direct experience. When we speak of the flow of consciousness we are referring to the changes that take place in consciousness over time. The events of consciousness are, of course, extremely complex and varied. They embrace images in every sensory modality and in every degree of vividness, realism, and believability, including inner dialogue, hallucinations, reveries, and dreamlike sequences; and they also embrace qualities that are at the same time less figured and more pervasive than these—the affects. This chapter focuses on a broad class of these conscious contents. They do not contain the imagery of current perceptual activity but they contain imaginai qualities that one can describe in terms of forms, colors, sounds, words, smells, tastes, temperatures, and the like. I shall refer to this class as ”thought.” This chapter brings together ideas and data regarding ways to observe thought, the dimensions and forms of thought, and the factors that determine the content of thought as it changes from one moment to the next.

Dimensions of Thought Flow in Everyday Life

To what extent are three criteria of daydreaming–as thought that is fanciful, stimulus-independent, or undirected–equivalent? How are these properties of thought flow distributed during everyday activity? Students (N = 29) carrying a beeper described properties of their consciousness on a total of 1425 occasions by means of a Thought-Sampling Questionnaire, anxiety and depression measures, and activity report forms. Intrasubject analyses of thought variables identified eight orthogonal factors, including Visual Modality, Auditory Modality, Operantness (directedness), Attentiveness to External Stimulation, Controllability, Strangeness (fancifulness/bizarreness), Past Time Orientation, and Future Time Orientation. Most thought samples contained some interior monologue, largely independent of other variables. Thought properties were uncorrelated with affective variables, frustration of goals, and impulses to drink alcohol. Factors for individual differences differed sharply from the intrasubject results, with a single undifferentiated Vividness factor and controllability no longer a separate factor. The visual modality predominates for most individuals, about a third of thought is on the average predominantly undirected, an uncorrelated third is stimulus-independent, and about a quarter of thoughts contain at least traces of dream-like elements.

Goal Commitments and the content of thoughts and dreams: basic principles

A few empirically supported principles can account for much of the thematic content of waking thought, including rumination, and dreams. (1) An individual’s commitments to particular goals sensitize the individual to respond to cues associated with those goals. The cues may be external or internal in the person’s own mental activity. The responses may take the form of noticing the cues, storing them in memory, having thoughts or dream segments related to them, and/or taking action. Noticing may be conscious or not. Goals may be any desired endpoint of a behavioral sequence, including finding out more about something, i.e., exploring possible goals, such as job possibilities or personal relationships. (2) Such responses are accompanied and perhaps preceded by protoemotional activity or full emotional arousal, the amplitude of which determines the likelihood of response and is related to the value placed on the goal. (3) When the individual is in a situation conducive to making progress toward attaining the goal, the response to goal cues takes the form of actions or operant mental acts that advance the goal pursuit. (4) When circumstances are unfavorable for goal-directed operant behavior, the response remains purely mental, as in mind-wandering and dreaming, but still reflects the content of the goal pursuit or associated content. (5) Respondent responses such as mind-wandering are more likely when the individual is mentally unoccupied with ongoing tasks and less likely the more that is at stake in the ongoing task. The probability of respondent thought is highest during relaxed periods, when the brain’s default-mode network dominates, or during sleep. The article briefly summarizes neurocognitive findings that relate to mind-wandering and evidence regarding adverse effects of mind-wandering on task performance as well as evidence suggesting adaptive functions in regard to creative problem-solving, planning, resisting delay discounting, and memory consolidation.

Cyclic activity changes during extinction in rats: A potential model of depression*

Rats’ open-field activity immediately following extinction trials in a runway rose sharply from baseline, then dropped below baseline, and finally recovered. There was no discernible relationship between activity levels and runway performance during acquisition or extinction. The data confirm a theory that a sequence of invigoration, depression, and recovery of noninstrumental locomotor activity (an “incentive-disengagement cycle”) may regularly accompany incentive loss, including experimental extinction.

Handbook of motivational counselling: goal-based approaches to assessment and intervention with addiction and other problems.

This second edition of the Handbook of motivational counseling presents comprehensive coverage of the development and identification of motivational problems and the most effective treatment techniques.

A consciousness-sampling analysis of test anxiety and performance.

In order to evaluate cognitive-interference, reassertion, and reaction-to-performance models of test anxiety, 82 students completed the Test Anxiety Scale, provided state measures of anxiety just before and after a course examination, described their preparation for the test, and reported thought content and state anxiety up to six times during the test. Test Anxiety Scale scores were predictive of pre- and posttest state anxiety but not performance or problem-solving thought frequency during the test. Thought content was significantly but weakly correlated with performance, which was well correlated with posttest state anxiety but not with pretest anxiety. Pretest state anxiety was virtually uncorrelated with posttest state anxiety, with the correlations gradually declining during the test. Question-answering thought content correlated inversely with anxiety during the test. There was no group for whom anxiety appeared to facilitate performance. Preparation correlated only with performance. The pattern of results appears inconsistent with a cognitive-interference interpretation of test anxiety and suggests that in the naturalistic setting used, anxiety is more clearly an effect than a cause of poor performance.

Feedback effects and social facilitation of vigilance performance: Mere coaction versus potential evaluation

In an investigation of coaction effects on performance, Ss undertook a visual vigilance task in both isolation and coaction with a peer. Performance was improved by the presence of a coactor only when the coactor had access to information about the quality of the S’s performance.

Attentional bias modification for addictive behaviors: clinical implications.

When a person has a goal of drinking alcohol or using another addictive substance, the person appears to be automatically distracted by stimuli related to the goal. Because the attentional bias might propel the person to use the substance, an intervention might help modify it. In this article, we discuss techniques that have been developed to help people overcome their attentional bias for alcohol, smoking-related stimuli, drugs, or unhealthy food. We also discuss how these techniques are being adapted for use on mobile devices. The latter would allow people with an addictive behavior to use the attentional training in privacy and as frequently as needed. The attentional training techniques discussed here appear to have several advantages. They are inexpensive, can be fun to use, and have flexibility in when, where, and how often they are used. The evidence so far also suggests that they are effective.

Abolition of cyclic activity changes following amygdaloid lesions in rats

During extinction of a runway response, the activity levels of normal rats rise above, fall below, and finally return to baseline values in a regular sequence. In the present experiment amygdaloid lesions abolished these sequential activity changes. The results suggest that amygdaloid lesions abolish both the frustrational and depressional components of experimental extinction.