Coordination Funds

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Matthias Brand
• Subject Area: General, Cognitive and Mathematical Psychology ; Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience ; Personality Psychology, Clinical and Medical Psychology, Methodology
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 411232260

In the ICD-11, the World Health Organization currently recognizes two disorders due to addictive behaviors, which can be further specified as predominantly online: gambling and gaming disorders. Other potentially problematic online behaviors beyond gambling and gaming are debated in both academia and society, in particular problematic social network use, pornography use, and buying-shopping behaviors. Problematic pornography use is principally included within the diagnosis “compulsive sexual behavior disorder” (classified as an impulse control disorder), and buying-shopping disorder is an example (in the coding tool) of “other specified impulse control disorders”. However, based on meta-level criteria developed by an international consortium, we consider the following specific Internet-use disorders (IUD) to be most appropriately understood as disorders due to addictive behaviors, predominantly online: gaming disorder, pornography use disorder, buying-shopping disorder, and social network use disorder. These will be focused on in the second funding period of the FOR 2974 (as in the first funding period). The mechanisms underlying the development and maintenance of specific IUDs remain unclear. The FOR 2974 continuously aims to foster the understanding of the psychological mechanisms and neurobiological correlates of specific IUDs in order to inform treatment, policy, and public health. We still use the I-PACE (Interaction of Person-Affect-Cognition-Execution) model as the main theoretical framework to investigate the involvement of the theoretically argued (bio)psychological processes, in particular affective and cognitive mechanisms, in the development and maintenance of the aforementioned predominantly online addictive behaviors. In the second funding period, we will (again) use a cross-sectional comparison of individuals with recreational/non-problematic use, risky use, and pathological use of specific Internet applications, together with a six-month follow-up investigation. Additionally, we plan to recruit approximately 50% of the FOR 2974 cohort of the first funding period again, to achieve a three-year longitudinal study addressing potential changes in affective and cognitive mechanisms over the course of IUDs. As in the first funding period, one central characteristic of the FOR 2974 is the investigation of over 1,200 participants at several sites using the same core battery of experimental paradigms, neuropsychological tasks, questionnaires, biomarkers, and a follow-up survey. The architecture of the proposed research projects ranges from fundamental processes to ecological aspects towards clinical application. This allows us to contribute to a better scientific understanding of the psychological processes of IUD, but we will also contribute to clinical applications by including proof-of-concept studies showing which affective and cognitive mechanisms should be targeted more intensively to optimize treatment.

• DFG Programme: Research Units
• Subproject of: FOR 2974: Affective and cognitive mechanisms of specific Internet-use disorders (ACSID)