Theory of Mind in Substance Users: A Systematic Minireview

Abstract

Despite the lack of studies and the methodological limitations of the existing ones Theory of Mind seems to play a role in drug use conditions, which requires further investigation.

Theory of Mind Impairments in Women With Cocaine Addiction

“…In this regard, we suggest caution when comparing our results with those of other studies, including study results from highly educated samples. Sixth, we found lower MMSE and IQ scores in comparison to those values reported for the participants from European and North American studies (Sanvicente-Vieira et al, 2017). It is important to recognize that there were no group-wide differences regarding general intelligence in our study.…”

“…Emotion recognition is one of the core components of ToM (Ahmed & Stephen Miller, 2010;McDonald et al, 2013), and this function has been shown to be impaired in substance use disorders (Kornreich et al, 2003;McDonald et al, 2013;Sanvicente-Vieira et al, 2017), leading some authors to suggest that sociocognitive impairments may underlie the social dysfunctions found in individuals with substance use disorders (Homer et al, 2008;Volkow et al, 2011a). Consistent with this hypothesis, sociocognitive performance has been suggested to be a predictor of clinical outcomes (e.g., dependence severity, number of hospitalizations), and it has been proposed that there is an association between social cognition and addiction (Fernández-Serrano et al, 2010;McDonald et al, 2013;Sanvicente-Vieira et al, 2017).…”

“…However, the few studies investigating ToM within CDUs showed mixed results-indicating that there are ToM impairments regarding prosody processing, emotional empathy, and mental perspective-taking but not for visual emotion perception from eye pairs and faces (Hulka et al, 2013;Preller et al, 2014b). Although most of the results indicate that substance use-related disorders are also related to ToM impairments, a recent systematic review found that published evidence did not support the same effect from recreational use (Sanvicente-Vieira et al, 2017). In addition, the authors of this review suggest that future studies may consider strategies to cope with some of the limitations of the published studies, including the investigation of different drugs and sex effects.…”

Parental reflective functioning and executive functioning in mothers with substance use disorder

“…Several clinical studies have demonstrated a relationship between deficits in ToM and deficits in EF. An association between ToM and EF has been shown in autism disorders (Baron-Cohen, 1995;Fisher & Happé, 2005), maternal mental illness (Rigby, Conroy, Miele-Norton, Pawlby, & Happé, 2016) and in SUD populations (Sanvicente-Vieira, Romani-Sponchiado, Kluwe-Schiavon, Brietzke, Araujo et al, 2017;Verdejo-Garcıa, López-Torrecillas, de Arcos, & Pérez-Garcıa, 2005). Although there are few studies that have explored the explicit relationship between RF and EF, several studies make implicit inferences of possible associations, which lead us to suggest a relationship between the capacities.…”

Amphetamine-type stimulant use and conditional paths of consumption: data from the Second Brazilian National Alcohol and Drugs Survey

“…2,4,10 Additionally, the negative cognitive effects of ATS have been the subject of recent studies. 12 Worse still is the fact that ATS consumers are usually polydrug users, 11 thus increasing their health risks, such as sexual risk behaviors, which might lead to unfavorable outcomes. 13 In addition, previous studies have shown that socioeconomic and demographic characteristics can also have an impact on ATS consumption, acting either as protective factors against or risk factors for drug use and the development of addiction.…”