ACE Project Graduate Student Presents at CPDD Conference

27 Jun ACE Project Graduate Student Presents at CPDD Conference

On June 18th, 2023, Ace Project Graduate student, Benjelene Sutherland, gave a presentation at the College on Problems of Drug Dependence (CPDD) conference during the “E-cigarettes: That’s not a thumb drive, Mom!” session. Her presentation was titled “Working memory alternations predict adolescent e-cigarette use and positive expectancies via Alexithymia” and was about her current project examining the interrelations between working memory, task performance, difficulty describing feelings and adolescent e-cigarette use, and positive outcome expectancies. The findings showed support for simple mediation via difficulty describing feelings, such that alterations in working memory were associated with more difficulty describing feelings and that in turn predicted more e-cigarette use and positive outcomes expectancies (i.e., believe that e-cigarettes would help with negative affect reduction). Over 100 people attended the presentation. Benjelene Sutherland was also awarded the NIDA Director’s travel award.