Nonverbal behavior of human addicts: multimetric analysis.
OBJECTIVE
Ethological approach followed by multimetric statistical analysis was applied to characterize and discriminate alcohol, heroin and dual, alcohol and heroin, dependent subjects.


METHODS
Heroin, alcohol, and dual dependent patients (n=51) after one month of stabilization of remission and control volunteers (n=34) without a history of significant drug or alcohol use were interviewed and videotaped during the interview by approbation. Nonverbal behavioral cues monitored during the interview were analyzed by means of general linear procedure followed by correlation, factor and discriminant function analyses.


RESULTS
By using this approach the attempt to discriminate addicted groups between each other failed. Therefore we found acceptable to combine subjects in one group and to suggest the similarity between alcohol and heroin dependence. It was found that principal markers of behavioral structure in addicted subjects were higher responsivity to communicate distance, less expression of affiliation behavioral pattern, low level of correlations between different behavioral patterns, and unclear factor structure. Behavioral pattern "affiliation" was identified as discriminate behavior between control and addicted subjects.


CONCLUSIONS
Nonverbal cues of human behavior identified clear differences between healthy control and addictive subjects. Therefore, ethological approach described in this paper could be recommended for future use in clinical practice.
Verbitskaya
Elena V
EV
Laboratory of Biomedical Statistics, Scientific Research Center, Pavlov State Medical University, St. Petersburg, Russia. verboel@spmu.rssi.ru
Krupitsky
Evgeny M
EM
Burakov
Andrey
A
Tsoy-Podosenina
Marina V
MV
Egorova
Valentina Yu
VY
Bushara
Natalia
N
Vekovischeva
Olga Yu
OY
D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000523:psychology; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001519:Behavior; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003463:Cues; D016002:Discriminant Analysis; D006556:Heroin Dependence / Q000523:psychology; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology*