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Effect of hashish on vigilance performance
Perceptual and Motor Skills
|February 1, 1994
Summary
Hashish use impairs visual attention, leading to more false alarms in users compared to controls. Vigilance tasks are crucial for assessing hashish
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Psychology
Background:
- Hashish is a cannabis derivative with psychoactive properties.
- Understanding the cognitive effects of hashish use is important for public health.
- Sustained attention, or vigilance, is a critical cognitive function potentially impacted by substance use.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the impact of hashish use on visual sustained attention (vigilance).
- To compare the performance of hashish users and non-users on a vigilance task.
Main Methods:
- A group of 11 hashish users was compared to 11 controls.
- Participants completed a visual sustained attention (vigilance) task.
- Performance metrics, including false alarm rates, were analyzed.
Main Results:
- Hashish users exhibited altered sensitivity on the vigilance task.
- Hashish users made significantly more false alarms (8.7) than controls (2.6).
- These findings suggest indiscriminate responding in hashish users.
Conclusions:
- Hashish use negatively affects visual sustained attention.
- Vigilance assessment is a valuable tool for detecting adverse cognitive effects of hashish.
- Further research is needed to understand the long-term cognitive consequences of hashish consumption.