Alcohol-related attentional bias in problem drinkers with the flicker change blindness paradigm.

The authors used a flicker paradigm for inducing change blindness as a more direct method of measuring attentional bias in problem drinkers in treatment than the previously used, modified Stroop, Posner, and dual-task paradigms. First, in an artificially constructed visual scene comprising digitized photographs of real alcohol-related and neutral objects, problem drinkers detected a change made to an alcohol-related object more quickly than to a neutral object. Age- and gender-matched social drinkers showed no such difference. Second, problem drinkers given the alcohol-related change to detect showed a negative correlation between the speed with which the change was detected and the problem severity as measured by the number of times previously treated. Coupled with other data from heavy and light social drinkers, the data support a graded continuity of attentional bias underpinning the length of the consumption continuum.

[1]  K. Hugdahl,et al.  Selective processing of visual alcohol cues in abstinent alcoholics: an approach-avoidance conflict? , 1997, Addictive behaviors.

[2]  L. Sharpe,et al.  Modification of attentional biases in chronic pain patients: a preliminary study , 2004, European journal of pain.

[3]  Ronald A. Rensink,et al.  TO SEE OR NOT TO SEE: The Need for Attention to Perceive Changes in Scenes , 1997 .

[4]  I. Albery,et al.  Selective attentional bias to alcohol related stimuli in problem drinkers and non-problem drinkers. , 2001, Addiction.

[5]  K. Mogg,et al.  Attentional biases for alcohol cues in heavy and light social drinkers: the roles of initial orienting and maintained attention , 2004, Psychopharmacology.

[6]  Linda C. Sobell,et al.  Timeline Follow-Back A Technique for Assessing Self-Reported Alcohol Consumption , 1992 .

[7]  Bruce Bridgeman,et al.  Perceptual conditions necessary to induce change blindness , 2003 .

[8]  M. Posner.  Foundations of cognitive science , 1989 .

[9]  Brian J. Scholl,et al.  Attenuated Change Blindness for Exogenously Attended Items in a Flicker Paradigm , 2000 .

[10]  Colin M. Macleod.  Half a century of research on the Stroop effect: an integrative review. , 1991, Psychological bulletin.

[11]  W. Cox,et al.  The effects of alcohol cue exposure on non-dependent drinkers' attentional bias for alcohol-related stimuli. , 2003, Alcohol and alcoholism.

[12]  G. Yeates,et al.  Effects of alcohol cues on cognitive processing in heavy and light drinkers. , 1999, Drug and alcohol dependence.

[13]  Frank Ryan,et al.  Attentional bias and alcohol dependence: a controlled study using the modified stroop paradigm. , 2002, Addictive behaviors.

[14]  M. R. Kristian,et al.  Alcohol attentional bias as a predictor of alcohol abusers' treatment outcome. , 2002, Drug and alcohol dependence.

[15]  Joanne Lusher,et al.  Alcohol dependence and the alcohol Stroop paradigm: evidence and issues. , 2004, Drug and alcohol dependence.

[16]  B. Jones,et al.  A flicker paradigm for inducing change blindness reveals alcohol and cannabis information processing biases in social users. , 2003, Addiction.

[17]  Ronald A. Rensink,et al.  Change blindness: past, present, and future , 2005, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[18]  Jacob Cohen,et al.  A power primer. , 1992, Psychological bulletin.

[19]  B. Jones,et al.  Social users of alcohol and cannabis who detect substance-related changes in a change blindness paradigm report higher levels of use than those detecting substance-neutral changes , 2002, Psychopharmacology.

[20]  R. Sokal,et al.  Introduction to biostatistics , 1973 .

[21]  D. Algom,et al.  A rational look at the emotional stroop phenomenon: a generic slowdown, not a stroop effect. , 2004, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[22]  M. Kindt,et al.  Relevance of research on experimental psychopathology to substance misuse , 2006 .

[23]  Helen Waters,et al.  A demonstration of attentional bias, using a novel dual task paradigm, towards clinically salient material in recovering alcohol abuse patients? , 2003, Psychological Medicine.

[24]  E. Fox,et al.  Do threatening stimuli draw or hold visual attention in subclinical anxiety? , 2001, Journal of experimental psychology. General.

[25]  Allen Allport,et al.  Visual attention , 1989 .

[26]  M. Nicholls,et al.  Can Free-Viewing Perceptual Asymmetries be Explained by Scanning, Pre-Motor or Attentional Biases? , 2002, Cortex.

[27]  T. Dalgleish,et al.  The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology. , 1996, Psychological bulletin.

[28]  John P. Allen,et al.  Measuring Alcohol Consumption: Psychosocial and Biochemical Methods , 1992 .

[29]  T. Duka,et al.  Attentional bias associated with alcohol cues: differences between heavy and occasional social drinkers , 2001, Psychopharmacology.

[30]  J. Deakin,et al.  Attentional bias for drug cues in opiate dependence , 2000, Psychological Medicine.

[31]  W. Corbin,et al.  Half full or half empty, the glass still does not satisfactorily quench the thirst for knowledge on alcohol expectancies as a mechanism of change. , 2001 .

[32]  B T Jones,et al.  A review of expectancy theory and alcohol consumption. , 2001, Addiction.

[33]  B. Jones,et al.  A pictorial Stroop paradigm reveals an alcohol attentional bias in heavier compared to lighter social drinkers , 2004, Journal of psychopharmacology.

[34]  Dc Washington.  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Ed. , 1994 .

[35]  Matthew Flatt,et al.  PsyScope: An interactive graphic system for designing and controlling experiments in the psychology laboratory using Macintosh computers , 1993 .

[36]  Mark W. Baldwin,et al.  The Inhibition of Socially Rejecting Information Among People with High Versus Low Self-Esteem: The Role of Attentional Bias and the Effects of Bias Reduction Training , 2004 .

[37]  C. Espie,et al.  Sleep-related attentional bias in good, moderate, and poor (primary insomnia) sleepers. , 2005, Journal of abnormal psychology.