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Alcoholgebruik en impliciete associatie : toepassing van het dual proces model in een studie naar de samenhang tussen cognities, impliciete associaties en alcoholgebruik bij adolescenten met een licht verstandelijke beperking

Teunis, Leonie (2010) Alcoholgebruik en impliciete associatie : toepassing van het dual proces model in een studie naar de samenhang tussen cognities, impliciete associaties en alcoholgebruik bij adolescenten met een licht verstandelijke beperking.

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Abstract:In the past, there have been many studies to explain excessive alcohol usage among adolescents. These studies show that adolescents not only drink alcohol out of their own conscious considerations, but are for an important part, driven by automatic, subconscious incentives that either motivate or demotivate them to abuse alcohol. Trying to clarify alcohol usage using this approach corresponds with the vision of the dual-process theory. According to this theory, this behaviour can be declared using two parallel components which, combined, contribute to the behaviour of an individual. On the one hand there is an explicit, conscious and discursive component, which is managed by the thoughts and conscious assessment processes of a person, also called their cognitions. On the other hand there is the implicit component of behaviour supervision, which is not accessible for the reasoning ability of a person, but is related to subconscious, impulsive and emotional heuristics. Implicit association tests offer a possibility to map the power of implicit associations. The last few years, a multitude of such tests have been developed, where the main point generally is to attribute images or words either positively or negatively, or that data is collected about response times of a correspondent during specific activities; an accelerated or delayed response time might indicate the possibility of a subconscious preference or disapproval. While social cognitions are often more predicting for health behaviour, implicit associations appear to have a particularly strong predictive value in risk behaviours, like smoking or drinking. Implicit associations also seem to have a strong influence on the behaviour of adolescents with impaired memory or mental capacity, compared to adolescents without these impairments. This could be explained by the fact that cognitions have an inhibiting effect on the automatic, implicit tendencies of humans. Reduced cognitive capacity seems to reduce this inhibiting effect. In adolescents with mild mental disability there is, in comparison to the general populace, often a reduction in executive functions, like working memory and short term memory. Such cognitive restrictions should lead to a strong connection between implicit alcohol associations and actual alcohol usage.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:77 psychology
Programme:Psychology MSc (66604)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/60537
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