Addictions: BBS Call for Commentators

[Stevan Harnad]

    Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article on:

    RESOLVING THE CONTRADICTIONS OF ADDICTION
    by Gene Heyman (Psychology, Harvard)

This article has been accepted for publication in Behavioral and Brain
Sciences (BBS), an international, interdisciplinary journal providing
Open Peer Commentary on important and controversial current research in
the biobehavioral and cognitive sciences.

Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a current
BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator for this article, to
suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how to
become a BBS Associate, please send email to:

    bbs at soton.ac.uk or write to:

    Behavioral and Brain Sciences
    Department of Psychology
    University of Southampton
    Highfield, Southampton
    SO17 1BJ UNITED KINGDOM

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html
    http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/bbs
    ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS
    ftp://cogsci.ecs.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/BBS
    gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals

To help us put together a balanced list of commentators, please give
some indication of the aspects of the topic on which you would bring
your areas of expertise to bear if you were selected as a commentator.
An electronic draft of the full text is available for inspection by
anonymous ftp (or gopher or world-wide-web) according to the
instructions that follow after the abstract.
____________________________________________________________________

    RESOLVING THE CONTRADICTIONS OF ADDICTION

                Gene M. Heyman
                Department of Psychology
                Harvard University
                Cambridge, MA 02138
                gmh at wjh12.harvard.edu

    KEYWORDS: Addiction, compulsive behavior, disease, incentive-
    sensitization, reinforcement, rational choice, matching law

    ABSTRACT: Research findings on addiction are contradictory.
    According to biographical records and widely used diagnostic
    manuals, addicts use drugs compulsively. These accounts are
    consistent with genetic research and laboratory experiments in
    which repeated administration of addictive drugs caused changes
    in neural substrates associated with reward. However,
    epidemiological and experimental data show that the
    consequences of drug consumption can significantly modify drug
    intake in addicts. The disease model can account for the
    compulsive features of addiction, but not occasions in which
    price and punishment reduced drug consumption in addicts.
    Conversely, learning models of addiction can account for the
    influence of price and punishment, but not compulsive drug
    taking. The occasion for this paper is that recent developments
    in behavioral choice theory resolve the apparent contradictions
    in the addiction literature. The basic argument includes the
    following four statements. First, repeated consumption of an
    addictive drug decreases its future value and the future value
    of competing activities. Second, the frequency of an activity
    is a function of its relative (not absolute) value. This
    implies that an activity that reduces the values of competing
    behaviors can increase in frequency even if its own value also
    declines. Third, a recent experiment (Heyman & Tanz, 1995)
    shows that the effective reinforcement contingencies are
    relative to a frame of reference, and this frame of reference
    can change so as to favor optimal or sub-optimal choice.
    Fourth, if the frame of reference is local, reinforcement
    contingencies will favor excessive drug use, but if the frame
    of reference is global, the reinforcement contingencies will
    favor controlled drug use. The transition from a global to
    local frame of reference explains relapse and other compulsive
    features of addiction.

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To help you decide whether you would be an appropriate commentator for
this article, an electronic draft is retrievable by anonymous ftp from
ftp.princeton.edu according to the instructions below (the filename is
bbs.heyman). Please do not prepare a commentary on this draft.
Just let us know, after having inspected it, what relevant expertise
you feel you would bring to bear on what aspect of the article.
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These files are also on the World Wide Web and the easiest way to
retrieve them is with Netscape, Mosaic, gopher, archie, veronica, etc.
Here are some of the URLs you can use to get to the BBS Archive:

    http://www.princeton.edu/~harnad/bbs.html
    http://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/bbs.html
    gopher://gopher.princeton.edu:70/11/.libraries/.pujournals
    ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.heyman
    ftp://cogsci.soton.ac.uk/pub/harnad/BBS/bbs.heyman

To retrieve a file by ftp from an Internet site, type either:
ftp ftp.princeton.edu
   or
ftp 128.112.128.1
   When you are asked for your login, type:
anonymous
   Enter password as queried (your password is your actual userid:
   yourlogin at yourhost.whatever.whatever - be sure to include the "@")
cd /pub/harnad/BBS
   To show the available files, type:
ls
   Next, retrieve the file you want with (for example):
get bbs.heyman
   When you have the file(s) you want, type:
quit

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Where the above procedure is not available there are two fileservers:
ftpmail at decwrl.dec.com
       and
bitftp at pucc.bitnet
that will do the transfer for you. To one or the
other of them, send the following one line message:

help

for instructions (which will be similar to the above, but will be in
the form of a series of lines in an email message that ftpmail or
bitftp will then execute for you).

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