Study On The Heroin Addicting Abstainer's Attention Disorder

Heroin is the widely used drug for the drug addicts in our country, the illegal abuse not only leads to a lot of social problems, but also brings the addicts much physical and psychological suffering. Because of its strong toxicity, the effect of quit is undesirable, the relapse rate is very high, and the craving for the drugs become the main reason for the relapse. Therefore, through the in-depth study of the addicts' psychological system and cognitive features, the experimental evidence and theoretical basis can be supplied as an effective psychological technique and the way to promote the quit of drugs and kick the danger of drugs on the basis of physiological quit.In the process of cognitive activity, attention is closely related to other cognitive functions, and it is the controller of psychological activity, the study on the attention features and disorders would help the addiction abstainers and there family members to better eliminate the clues and stimulants related to drugs that can bring addicts adverse effects. However, the current domestic research in this area is still relatively weak, and the study on addiction quit concentrates more on pharmacological effect of drugs and social prevention and intervention areas, but is lacking of the study on the attention psychological mechanism of addicts to drugs from the angle of psychology. Therefore, this study takes the heroin addicts' attention featurea and disorders as the objects, in the hope of obtaining some valuable results to promote the study and prevention and treatment work in this area, specifically, this study mainly uses behavior measurement technology and ERP (Event-Related Potentials) technique to study the heroin addiction abstainers' attention characteristics and disorders from 3 aspects, 5 experiences:(1) the first experiment uses behavior measurement technique to explore if there is attention bias and disorders in the learning-recognition process of the words and pictures material on drug and sex for the heroin addiction abstainer, in the hope of revealing the influence mechansism of those contents which contain drug and sex information of the heroin addiction abstainers. The results show that, comparing with the high abstaining group and normal control group, the lower abstaining group have the significantly faster recognition RT of drug and sex information, this shows that in the learning stage of words and pictures, the lower abstaining group are more sensible to drug and sex information, and may pay much of their cognitive resources to make cognitive processing, so the reaction is more rapid and stronger. This can also explain why many drug addicts will long for and be in addicted in drug again when they come back into the former environment where has drug related information if their quit is not complete or be in a very serious addiction. In addition, the result of the first experiment doesn't reveal that the addicts have some attention and memory disorders in the learning-recognition process.(2)the second and third experiments choose the lower abstaining group and higher abstaining group as the experimental objects respectively, the brain-term changes of the recognition of drug and sex words are discussed in an attempt to note their attention bias to drug and sex words. The behavioral data indicates that as for the recognizing response of drug and sex new words, the response of the lower abstaining group are vividly faster than the higher abstaining group, and the correction rate is significantly higher than the higher abstaining group. This seems to indicate that to the lower abstainers, the drug and sex related clues will be easier in the process of learning information words and make the relative words getting initially active in order to improve the differential ability, so when in the process of recognition, the differential ability of new and old words is improved, it manifests that comparing with the high abstainers, the low abstainers make faster and more accurate response.For the lower abstainers, the ERP wave which is induced by the recognition of drug and sex words has no differences on the crest of the wave and the latency in early ingredients and P500, but only in the 800-1000ms time window, the words of drug have a more positive shift than sex words, this may show that the abstaining group are more sensitive in the drug words than the sex words. There might be a more widely processing on drug words that is easier to evoke the relative drugging experience, and cause a wider association, so comparing with the sex words, a more positive ERP component is induced.Moreover, the second experiment shows that there is no difference in the wave of the new and old vocabulary recognition of drug for the lower abstainers. Researchers have shown that the recognition of the emergence of new and old effect is mainly related to that if the abstainers are familiar with the stimulant, the reason why there exits the new-old effect may be that the objects are more familiar with the old words than the new ones. But as for the objects who have quitten drug for not a long time, because of the frequent contact with drug before, they are familiar and sensitive with the words containing of drug information, and these words are easier caused active, so the objects will not have a strange feeling to those new drug words that have not appeared in there learning stage, and have the same familiarity with the old words. Conversely, viewing from the data of EEG, the new-old effect of EEG are significantly vivid for the higher abstainers to recognize the drug words, it is mainly reflected in the 300-600ms time window. Because the higher abstaining group have been quitted drug for a long time, and the drug words are not easier to stimulate, so there will be different familiarity to the new and old words in the recognition stage.(3) the fourth experiment makes some adjustment to the classic research form of CNV, it uses different information words (drug, sex and neutral) as the warning signal by observing and recording the different information words' influence to the heroin abstainers' CNV wave that is induced in the condition of attention warning to conduct the further analysis of the characteristics of attention maintenance. The result shows that in the 400-500 time window, drug and sex information can induce a more positive ERP component than the neutral words, because this component might reflect that the objects' automatic process to the drug and sex information in the process of attention maintenance, and these clue words might induce the more widely cognitive association, so in this way the more positive ERP components are induced; but in the 1300-1400ms time window, drug words induce a more positive ERP component than the neutral words, it seems to show that in this time area, drug information still has influence on the attention maintenance process. In the 100 time window after the appearance of the command signal, that is in the 2300-2400ms time window, sex and neutral words have induced a more negative offset to the EPR component than drug words. So we surmise that in the condition of sex and neutral information, for the objects can concentrate their attention to the appearance of the command signal, so after the emergence of the signal, the objects' warning state will be released suddenly, in this way, the more negative ERP component is induced. But in the condition of drug words, because the objects are interfered by the drug information, attention warning process might be blocked, when the signal appears, the reaction of the objects might be slower. Therefore, the changing speed of the EEG is not obvious other two conditions.(4) using the ERP technique, the fifth experiment discusses the attention distribution features and the differences between the heroin addiction abstainers and the control group in the condition of finishing the simple and complicated visual tasks in an attempt to reveal the cognitive disorders might exit on the attention distribution of the heroin addicting abstainers. The behavioral data shows that both of the objects of the two groups' reflection are faster in the circle of the word of "red" than the word of "red" or the circle, and the correction rate is the same. As opposed to the simple tasks, it requires the objects to recognize the attributes of the "circle" or the word "red" in the complicated tasks, in order to making sure the faster response, they must distribute their attention to the two attributes, if we can discover that one of the requirements is met, can the right judgment be made. Therefore, comparing the simple tasks to the complicated tasks, the cognitive resources used in the completion of the complicated tasks are more than in the simple tasks, and it is quite possible to be related to the rational distribution of the attention resources. The EEG data shows that, as for the complicated tasks, the N100 amplitude is significantly higher than the normal control group. This seems to indicate that when the higher abstaining group complete the complicated tasks, they devote more psychological resources in the early cognitive process to control the attention distribution process so as to make the parallel processing to the two attributes in the complicated tasks and make faster reaction. Therefore, the results of the fifth experiment seems to show that the heroin addicting abstainers should spend more cognitive resources on the attention distribution to finish the experimental tasks smoothly, comparing with the normal control group, there have a certain of disorders in the attention distribution, but it can be remedied by the rational use of the cognitive resources. Of course, this might be related to the task attribute chosen in the experiment, the further research might be conducted to see whether they can still complete the attention attribution task well if the difficulties of the task increase,...