Cannabis Use, Age of Initiation, and Neurocognitive Performance: Findings from a Large Sample of Heavy Drinking Emerging Adults
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the associations between cannabis use and neurocognitive functioning, including self-reported attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms, in a large sample of emerging adults (ages 21-25) using a cross-sectional design. A secondary objective was to examine age of cannabis initiation as a moderator. METHODS: Participants were high-risk drinking emerging adults (n = 598) reporting past-month cannabis use in the following categories: 1) non-users (i.e., never or not in the past month; n = 276), 2) occasional users (i.e., monthly or weekly users; n = 201), and 3) daily users (n = 121). Categorical comparisons were conducted on working memory, attention, behavioral inhibition, delay and probability discounting, verbal intelligence, and ADHD symptoms. Complementary dimensional analyses examined cannabis severity in relation to neurocognition using regressions. Covariates were age, race, sex, income, years of education, tobacco use, and alcohol use. RESULTS: Frequency of cannabis use was significantly associated with poorer working memory performance, more impulsive delay discounting, and greater endorsement of ADHD symptoms, but not other domains. Effect sizes were small and poorer performance was selectively present among daily, not occasional, cannabis users. Earlier age of initiation was not independently or interactively associated with neurocognitive performance. CONCLUSIONS: Daily cannabis use was selectively adversely associated with aspects of memory, impulsivity, and subjective attentional functioning, but most cognitive indicators were not implicated, and evidence of amplification by earlier age of initiation was not observed. Ascertaining causal versus consequential roles of cannabis in neurocognitive functioning is an important priority.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".