Abstract
Cognitive models emphasise the importance of attentional bias in addiction. However, many attentional bias tasks have been criticised for questionable psychometric properties and inability to differentiate between engagement and disengagement processes. This study therefore examined the suitability of two alternative tasks for assessing attentional bias within the context of alcohol use. Participants were undergraduate students (N = 169) who completed the Visual Search Task and Odd-One-Out Task, the latter of which is designed to differentiate between engagement and disengagement processes of attention, at baseline and one week later. Participants also completed baseline measures of alcohol consumption, craving, and alcohol use problems. Internal consistency was adequate for the Visual Search Task index, and weak for the Odd-One-Out Task indices. Test-retest reliability was weak for both tasks. The Visual Search Task index and the disengagement (but not the engagement) index of the Odd-One-Out Task showed a positive association with alcohol consumption. This study was restricted to a non-clinical student sample. The relatively high error rate of the Odd-One-Out Task might have reduced its sensitivity as an index of attentional bias. Both tasks showed some merit as attentional bias measures, and results suggested that attentional disengagement might be particularly related to alcohol use. However, the reliability of the current measures was inadequate. One potential explanation for the low reliability is that non-clinical samples may have weak and unstable attentional biases to alcohol. Future efforts should be made to improve the psychometric qualities of both tasks and to administer them in a clinical sample.
Highlights
Current cognitive models of addiction emphasise the importance of selective visual attention in the persistence of addiction [1,2]
We found that the disengagement index showed an association with the quantity of used alcohol (r = .18, p = .028) and with the frequency of consumption (r = .18, p = .026), both associations were weak and only evident for alcohol consumption but not for craving or alcohol use problems
The major findings can be summarised as follows: (1) the internal consistency of the Attentional Bias (AB) index as measured with the Visual Search Task (VST) was found to be adequate, and both indices of the Odd-One-Out Task (OOOT) were found to be weak; (2) the test-retest reliability of the AB indices was found to be weak for both tasks; (3) AB for alcohol as measured with both the VST and the disengagement index of the OOOT was found to be related with the frequency of alcohol consumption, with the disengagement index of the OOOT correlating with the number of consumed standard units of alcohol; (4) AB as measured with the VST and the OOOT was non-significantly related with craving and alcohol use problems
Summary
Current cognitive models of addiction emphasise the importance of selective visual attention in the persistence of addiction [1,2]. Increased attention for substance cues has been associated with the intensity of craving [3,4]. Craving may increase attentional capture of substances, and/or the difficulty to disengage attention from these cues. People may enter a self-reinforcing bias-craving-bias cycle that may play an important.
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