Craving modulates attentional bias towards alcohol in severe alcohol use disorder : An eye-tracking study

© 2023 Society for the Study of Addiction..

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Competing models disagree on three theoretical questions regarding alcohol-related attentional bias (AB), a key process in severe alcohol use disorder (SAUD): (1) is AB more of a trait (fixed, associated with alcohol use severity) or state (fluid, associated with momentary craving states) characteristic of SAUD; (2) does AB purely reflect the over-activation of the reflexive/reward system or is it also influenced by the activity of the reflective/control system and (3) does AB rely upon early or later processing stages? We addressed these issues by investigating the time-course of AB and its modulation by subjective craving and cognitive load in SAUD.

DESIGN: A free-viewing eye-tracking task, presenting pictures of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, combined with a concurrent cognitive task with three difficulty levels.

SETTING: A laboratory setting in the detoxification units of three Belgian hospitals.

PARTICIPANTS: We included 30 patients with SAUD self-reporting craving at testing time, 30 patients with SAUD reporting a total absence of craving and 30 controls matched on sex and age. All participants from SAUD groups met the DSM-5 criteria for SAUD.

MEASUREMENTS: We assessed AB through early and late eye-tracking indices. We evaluated the modulation of AB by craving (comparison between patients with/without craving) and cognitive load (variation of AB with the difficulty level of the concurrent task).

FINDINGS: Dwell time measure indicated that SAUD patients with craving allocated more attention towards alcohol-related stimuli than patients without craving (P < 0.001, d = 1.093), resulting in opposite approach/avoidance AB according to craving presence/absence. SAUD patients without craving showed a stronger avoidance AB than controls (P = 0.003, d = 0.806). AB did not vary according to cognitive load (P = 0.962, η2 p  = 0.004).

CONCLUSIONS: The direction of alcohol-related attentional bias (approach/avoidance) appears to be determined by patients' subjective craving at testing time and does not function as a stable trait of severe alcohol use disorder. Alcohol-related attentional bias appears to rely on later/controlled attentional stages but is not modulated by the saturation of the reflective/control system.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

2023

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:119

Enthalten in:

Addiction (Abingdon, England) - 119(2023), 1 vom: 01. Jan., Seite 102-112

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Bollen, Zoé [VerfasserIn]
Pabst, Arthur [VerfasserIn]
Masson, Nicolas [VerfasserIn]
Wiers, Reinout W [VerfasserIn]
Field, Matt [VerfasserIn]
Maurage, Pierre [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

3K9958V90M
Alcohol
Alcohol use disorder
Attentional bias
Avoidance bias
Cognitive load
Ethanol
Eye-tracking
Journal Article

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 19.12.2023

Date Revised 19.12.2023

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1111/add.16333

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM361565240