Cognitive theories of addiction: Α narrative review

Several theories have been developed in order to understand the phenomenon of addiction. From a science development perspective, it is important to examine theories with shared concepts within a common framework, generate and test new hypotheses. Thispaper reviews those theories and models that consider substance misuse as a decision making process involving conscious and unconscious cognitive processes including simple classical conditioning models, cue reactivity, expectancy theory, social learning theory, neuropsychologicalmodels and the new hierarchical PRIME theory. A synthetic approach has been used as to identify similarities and to promote the incremental value of the discussed theories.