Mild stress increases attentional bias in social drinkers who drink to cope: A replication and extension.

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 312-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matt Field ◽  
Martin Quigley
2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 204380871877963 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Gladwin ◽  
Matthijs Vink

Attentional bias variability may be related to alcohol abuse. Of potential use for studying variability is the anticipatory attentional bias: Bias due to the locations of predictively-cued rather than already-presented stimuli. The hypothesis was tested that conflicting automatic associations are related to attentional bias variability. Further, relationships were explored between anticipatory biases and individual differences related to alcohol use. 74 social drinkers performed a cued Visual Probe Task and univalent Single-Target Implicit Associations Tasks. Questionnaires were completed on risky drinking, craving, and motivations to drink or refrain from drinking. Conflict was related to attentional bias variability at the 800 ms Cue-Stimulus Interval. Further, a bias related to craving and risky drinking was found at the 400 ms Cue-Stimulus Interval. Thus, the selection of attentional responses was biased by predicted locations of expected salient stimuli. The results support a role of conflicting associations in attentional bias variability.


2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 1017-1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Fernie ◽  
Paul Christiansen ◽  
Jon C Cole ◽  
Abigail K Rose ◽  
Matt Field

Author(s):  
Casey McGivern ◽  
David Curran ◽  
Donncha Hanna

Abstract Rationale Theoretical models regarding the automaticity of attentional processes highlight a progression of attentional bias style from controlled to automatic in drinking populations as alcohol use progresses. Previous research has focused on older adolescent and adult drinking populations at later stages in their drinking career. Objectives The aim of this study was to investigate alcohol attention bias in 14–16-year-old adolescent social drinkers and abstainers. Methods Alcohol attention bias was measured in social drinking and abstaining groups in an eye-tracking paradigm. Questionnaires measured alcohol use, expectancies, exposure and socially desirable response styles. Results Social drinkers fixated to alcohol stimuli more frequently and spent a larger proportion of their fixation time attending to alcohol stimuli compared to non-drinkers. Groups displayed differences in their style of attentional processing of alcohol-related information, with heavy drinkers fixating significantly longer to alcohol information across alcohol stimulus presentation and exhibiting a delayed disengagement style of alcohol attention bias that differentiated them from light drinking and abstaining peers. All social drinkers fixated significantly more than abstainers in the latter half of alcohol stimulus presentation. Conclusion Alcohol attention bias was present in this adolescent sample. Drinking subgroups are defined from abstaining peers by unique features of their attentional bias that are controlled in nature. These findings are comparable to those in other adolescent and adult social drinking populations. The identification of specific attentional bias features according to drinking subpopulations has implications for our theoretical understanding of developing alcohol attention bias and problematic drinking behaviours, as well as at-risk identification and early intervention.


2017 ◽  
Vol 70 ◽  
pp. 14-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Manchery ◽  
Devorah E. Yarmush ◽  
Peter Luehring-Jones ◽  
Joel Erblich

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Rebecca Pennington ◽  
Daniel Shaw

Background and Aims: Research indicates that high consumers of alcohol exhibit attentional bias (AB) towards alcohol-related cues, suggestive of a cognitive mechanism that might drive substance seeking. Many tasks that measure AB (e.g., visual probe, addiction Stroop), however, are limited by their reliance on non-appetitive control cues, the serial presentation of stimuli, and their poor internal reliability. The current study employed a visual conjunction search (VCS) task capable of presenting multiple alcoholic and non-alcoholic appetitive cues simultaneously to assess whether social drinkers attend selectively to alcoholic stimuli. To assess the construct validity of this task, we examined whether alcohol consumption and related problems, subjective craving, and drinking motives predict alcohol-specific AB. Design & Setting: A VCS task was performed in a laboratory setting, which required participants to detect the presence of appetitive alcoholic (wine, beer) and non-alcoholic (cola, lemonade) targets within arrays of matching and non-matching distractors. Participants: Data from 99 participants were assessed (MAge = 20.77, SD = 2.98; 64 [65%] females), with 81.8% meeting the threshold for harmful alcohol consumption (MAUDIT = 12.89, SD = 5.79). Measurements: Self-reports of alcohol consumption and related problems (AUDIT), subjective craving (Alcohol Craving Questionnaire Short Form) and drinking motives (Drinking Motives Questionnaire Short Form) were obtained, and the VCS task measured response times for the correct detection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic targets. Findings: Participants were significantly quicker to detect alcoholic relative to non-alcoholic appetitive targets (p < .001, dz = .41), which was predicted positively by AUDIT scores (p = .013, R2 = .06%). The VCS task achieved excellent reliability (α > .79), superior to other paradigms. Conclusions: The Visual Conjunction Search task presents as a highly reliable method for assessing alcohol-related attentional bias, and shows that heavy social drinkers prioritise alcoholic cues in their immediate environment.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 68-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian P. Albery ◽  
Dinkar Sharma ◽  
Simon Noyce ◽  
Daniel Frings ◽  
Antony C. Moss

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