CRAVING REGULATION TRAINING and SMOKING 2 3 4 5 Brief Training in Regulation of Craving Reduces Cigarette Smoking 6 7 Richard B
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1 Running head: CRAVING REGULATION TRAINING AND SMOKING 2 3 4 5 Brief training in regulation of craving reduces cigarette smoking 6 7 Richard B. Lopez, Ph.D. 8 Department of Psychology, Bard College, Annandale on Hudson, NY, USA 9 10 Kevin N. Ochsner, Ph.D. 11 Department of Psychology, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA 12 13 Hedy Kober, Ph.D.* 14 Departments of Psychiatry & Psychology, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA 15 16 17 Word Count: 4,751 words (main text) 18 Tables: 2 19 Figures: 4 20 21 Funding: This research was supported by grants R01 DA022541 (to KO) and K12 DA00167 (to 22 HK) from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. These funding sources had no other role other 23 than financial support. 24 25 Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Peter Mende-Siedlecki and Katherine 26 Remy for their help with early stages of implementation, and Chukwudi Onyemekwu, Steff 27 Lyon, Daniel Bogart, Natalie Porter, Linh Tchang, and Colleen Doyle for their help with 28 screening and running participants. 29 30 Author contributions: K.O and H.K designed the study; R.L. and H.K. conducted analyses. The 31 manuscript was written by R.L. and H.K, and edited by KO. The final manuscript was approved 32 by all authors. The authors report no conflicts of interest. 33 34 35 This manuscript has been submitted for peer review, so please 36 consult this preprint for revised versions to be posted in the future 37 CRAVING REGULATION TRAINING AND SMOKING 2 1 Abstract 2 Craving is an important contributing factor in cigarette smoking and has been added as a 3 diagnostic criterion for addiction DSM-5. Cognitive-behavioral therapy and other treatments that 4 incorporate craving regulation strategies reduce smoking and likelihood of relapse. Although this 5 suggests that the regulation of craving is an important mechanism underlying smoking cessation, 6 it is unclear whether targeted interventions that train smokers to regulate craving can directly 7 impact real-world smoking behaviors. Across two pilot studies (N=33; N=60), we tested whether 8 a brief computer-delivered training session in the cognitive regulation of craving altered 9 subsequent smoking behaviors in daily life. Participants were first randomly assigned to either a 10 no training (control) group, or one of two Regulation of Craving Training (ROC-T) conditions. 11 Next, all participants came into the lab and those assigned to ROC-T conditions were trained to 12 implement a cognitive strategy to regulate their craving, by either focusing on the negative 13 consequences of smoking, or by distracting themselves. Then, these participants underwent 14 ROC-T during which they practiced using the strategy to regulate their craving during cue 15 exposure. Participants’ smoking was subsequently assessed via daily diaries for 3-6 days, and via 16 self-report up to 1-month follow-up. Across both studies, ROC-T conditions were associated 17 with significant reductions in average cigarettes smoked per day, with effects persisting through 18 follow-up. These results confirm that the regulation of craving is an important mechanism of 19 smoking cessation, and can be targeted via easily-administered training procedures, such as 20 ROC-T. 21 22 Keywords: Craving, regulation, smoking, computer-delivered training 23 24 CRAVING REGULATION TRAINING AND SMOKING 3 1 Cigarette smoking remains the most prevalent cause of preventable morbidity and 2 mortality in the world, including in developed countries like the United States (Centers for 3 Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2008). On average, smoking kills 1,200 Americans 4 every day, accounting for 480,000 deaths per year (National Center for Chronic Disease 5 Prevention and Health Promotion (US) Office on Smoking and Health, 2014), far exceeding 6 deaths from AIDS, murders, suicide, car crashes, alcohol, and all illicit drugs—combined 7 (Mokdad, Marks, Stroup, & Gerberding, 2004). As far as morbidity, recent estimates indicate 8 that approximately 14 million US adults had smoking-related medical conditions (Rostron, 9 Chang, & Pechacek, 2014). Moreover, smoking is associated with significant economic costs, 10 including medical expenses and lost worker productivity; in the US alone these costs exceed 11 $289 billion (National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (US) Office 12 on Smoking and Health, 2014). And despite increased awareness of the negative health 13 consequences of smoking, leading to marked declines in smoking rates over the past four 14 decades (i.e., 42.4% of US adults in 1965 to only 15.5% in 2016; Jamal et al., 2018), the 15 coronavirus pandemic has halted this trend (Altria Group Inc., 2021) and smoking has been 16 linked to increased severity of COVID-19 (Patanavanich & Glantz, 2020; Purkayastha et al., 17 2020). 18 Moreover, smoking cessation rates remain disproportionately low (Babb, Malarcher, 19 Schauer, Asman, & Jamal, 2017; Dutra et al., 2008). Although recent figures indicate that 68% 20 of smokers express the desire to quit every year, and 55.4% make an effort to quit, only 7.4% are 21 successful (Babb et al., 2017). Why is quitting still an unattainable goal for so many smokers? 22 One important contributor to smoking is craving. Craving is defined in the DSM-5 as “a 23 strong desire,” and previously has been linked to smoking and relapse following quit attempts CRAVING REGULATION TRAINING AND SMOKING 4 1 (Allen, Bade, Hatsukami, & Center, 2008; Cooney et al., 2007; Doherty, Kinnunen, Militello, & 2 Garvey, 1995; Gass, Motschman, & Tiffany, 2014; Shadel et al., 2011; Shiffman et al., 1997). 3 Further, craving that arises following exposure to smoking cues – known as cue-induced craving 4 – has also been reliably linked to smoking and relapse in particular studies (e.g., Carpenter et al., 5 2009; Conklin et al., 2015; Waters et al., 2004) and across multiple studies in terms of robust 6 meta-analytic effects (Vafay & Kober, In Prep). Indeed, this type of craving may be especially 7 important when considering treatment programs (Ferguson & Shiffman, 2009). 8 Importantly, many models of addiction posit that the inability to exert control over cue- 9 induced craving underlies compulsive smoking and other drug-seeking behaviors (Everitt & 10 Robbins, 2005; Goldstein & Volkow, 2011; Koob & Le Moal, 2001). As such, cue-induced 11 craving, and especially its regulation, might serve as an important target of smoking cessation 12 interventions to improve outcomes. Indeed, a key feature of cognitive-behavioral therapies 13 (CBT) for smoking cessation (and addiction more broadly) is to train individuals to change their 14 natural or prepotent responses (e.g., craving) to appetitive and/or affective stimuli by using 15 cognitive strategies (e.g., considering their negative consequences). Further, use of such 16 strategies has been linked to reduced smoking in studies using ecological momentary assessment 17 (O’Connell, Hosein, Schwartz, & Leibowitz, 2007). 18 We and others have tested whether such strategies effectively reduce craving in 19 controlled laboratory settings. For example, in a CBT-based regulation of craving (ROC) task, 20 cigarette-smoking participants were instructed to focus on the negative consequences of smoking 21 while being exposed to smoking cues, and reported a significant reduction in craving (Kober, 22 Kross, Mischel, Hart, & Ochsner, 2010). Subsequent studies have replicated this result by 23 demonstrating that cigarette smokers can successfully implement this strategy via the ROC task CRAVING REGULATION TRAINING AND SMOKING 5 1 (Kober, Kross, et al., 2010; Luijten, van Meel, & Franken, 2011), and that regulation success 2 depends on the extent to which smokers recruit brain regions that were previously associated 3 with regulation of negative emotions (i.e., dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex; Buhle 4 et al., 2014; Kober, et al., 2010a). In turn, recruitment of these prefrontal regions was associated 5 with reduced activity in the ventral striatum and vmPFC (Kober et al., 2010b)—regions typically 6 linked to reward computation and the subjective experience of craving (e.g., see Diekhof, Kaps, 7 Falkai, & Gruber, 2012 for a meta-analysis). This CBT-based ROC task has also been 8 administered to methamphetamine users, who successfully diminished their craving when 9 employing the regulation strategy described above (Lopez, Onyemekwu, Hart, Ochsner, & 10 Kober, 2015). Similar findings have since been reported with other stimulant users, alcohol- 11 dependent individuals, and with food (Giuliani, Calcott, & Berkman, 2013; Giuliani, Mann, 12 Tomiyama, & Berkman, 2014; Naqvi et al., 2015; Suzuki et al., 2020; Volkow et al., 2010). 13 To build on this work, we developed Regulation of Craving Training (ROC-T) – 14 a training procedure based on the ROC task, in which participants practice using strategies to 15 regulate their craving over and over in the presence of cigarette cues. Here we tested whether this 16 brief, computerized training procedure is effective in reducing not only craving, but also 17 cigarette smoking in daily life. Specifically, we conducted two pilot studies: we recruited daily 18 smokers who were motivated to reduce or quit smoking and randomly assigned them to one of 19 three groups: two experimental groups that received ROC-T and a control group that did not 20 receive an intervention. Both ROC-T conditions were CBT-based, with participants in one 21 condition trained to engage in cognitive reappraisal by focusing on the negative consequences of 22 smoking when experiencing craving, as described above. In the other ROC-T condition, 23 participants were trained to cognitively distract themselves by bringing to mind something CRAVING REGULATION TRAINING AND SMOKING 6 1 completely different when they feel craving. Although less frequently used in addiction 2 treatment, distraction is also part of CBT (Beck, 2011). We included both strategies to test 3 whether they would be equally or differentially effective.