Delay discounting (DD) describes the rate at which reinforcers lose value as the temporal delay to their receipt increases. Steeper discounting has been positively associated with vulnerability to substance use disorders, including cocaine use disorders. In the present study, we examined whether DD of hypothetical monetary reinforcers is associated with the duration of cocaine abstinence achieved among cocaine-dependent outpatients. Participants were 36 adults who were participating in a randomized controlled trial examining the efficacy of voucher-based contingency management (CM) using low-magnitude (N = 18) or high-magnitude (N = 18) voucher monetary values. DD was associated with the number of continuous weeks of cocaine abstinence achieved, even after adjusting for treatment condition during the initial 12-week, t(33) = 2.48, p = .045 and entire recommended 24-week of treatment, t(33) = 2.40, p = .022. Participants who exhibited steeper discounting functions achieved shorter periods of abstinence in the Low-magnitude voucher condition (12-week: t(16) = 2.48, p = .025; 24-week: t(16) = 2.68, p = .017), but not in the High-magnitude voucher condition (12-week: t(16) = 0.51, p = .618; 24-week: t(16) = 1.08, p = .298), although the interaction between DD and treatment condition was not significant (12-week: t(32) = -1.12, p = .271; 24-week: t(32) = -0.37, p = .712). These results provide further evidence on associations between DD and treatment response and extend those observations to a new clinical population (i.e., cocaine-dependent outpatients), while also suggesting that a more intensive intervention like the High-magnitude CM condition may diminish this negative relationship between DD and treatment response.

The objective of the current narrative literature review is to provide an epidemiological, developmental and clinical overview on cannabis use during pregnancy. Cannabis use in pregnancy poses major health concerns for pregnant mothers and their developing children. Although studies on the short- and long-term consequences of prenatal cannabis exposure are increasing, findings have been inconsistent or difficult to interpret due to methodological issues. Thus, consolidating these findings into clinical recommendations based on the mixed studies in the literature remains a challenge. Synthesizing the available observational studies is also difficult, because some of the published studies have substantial methodological weaknesses. Improving observational studies will be an important step toward understanding the extent to which prenatal exposure to cannabis influences neurodevelopment in the offspring. Therefore, further research on prenatal cannabis exposure and the long-term consequences to offspring health in representative samples are needed to guide and improve clinical care for pregnant women and their children. Future research should also investigate the role of policies on prenatal cannabis use.

A previous time-series study showed that rapidly repeating a single-word version of a negative self-referential thought reduced the discomfort and the believability associated with that thought. The present parametric study examined whether durations of word repetition were differentially effective in altering the discomfort and believability of negative self-referential thought. In two studies, both discomfort and believability varied systematically with the duration of word repetition. The effects of rapid repetition on emotional discomfort bottomed out after 3 s to 10 s of rapid repetition, whereas the effects on believability did so after 20 s to 30 s of repetition. This study lends support to the cognitive defusion interpretation of the effect of word repetition, suggesting that emotional discomfort and believability may be distinctive functional aspects of cognitive events.