Valentine, Poppy

Impulsivity, cannabis use, risk-taking behaviour and performance on vigilance, attention, and decision making tasks

Type:
Names:
Creator (cre): Valentine, Poppy, Thesis advisor (ths): Bauer, Ben, Degree committee member (dgc): Smith-Chant, Brenda, Degree committee member (dgc): Mostaghim, Amir, Degree granting institution (dgg): Trent University
Abstract:

This study aimed to explore relationships between impulsivity scores, cannabis use, and performance on vigilance, attention, and decision making tasks. We also investigated whether cannabis use related to self-reported risk taking behaviours, including risky driving, openness to engage with cryptocurrency markets, or gambling behaviour. The regular recreational cannabis users had significantly higher impulsivity scores and tendency to use other substances than non-users. The regular cannabis users had better performance efficiency than non-users for hit targets on the vigilance task, but not the other two target trial types. The regular cannabis users made significantly fewer errors than non-users on the verbal Stroop task. There were no significant performance differences on the Iowa Gambling Task between the regular recreational cannabis users and non-users. None of our other hypotheses explorations yielded statistically significant results.

Author Keywords: cannabis, cryptocurrency, gambling, impulsivity, Stroop, vigilance

2024