People who start using cannabis young or use it a lot may be worse at learning from mistakes

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2023-03-29 05:00

Australia; VIC

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A small Australian study of 70 people, 36 of whom were chronic cannabis users, found those who started using the drug at a young age and those who used it the most were worse at learning from and correcting errors in a computer-based task than non-users and those who started using the drug later in life or used it more moderately. However, overall, there was no difference between the cannabis users and those who abstained when it came to learning from and correcting errors. The task presented the participants with letters on the screen, asking them to press a button for each letter unless the same letter was presented twice in a row, in which case they were told not to press the button. If they failed and pressed the button anyway, they were told to press a different button following the appearance of the next non-identical letter sequence. Analysing the data, they found no difference between the groups, but a closer look showed that those who started using cannabis younger or were the heaviest users  performed worse at recognising mistakes and following the procedure to correct them.