scholarly journals Where's the wine? Heavy social drinkers show attentional bias towards alcohol in a visual conjunction search task

Addiction ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 115 (9) ◽  
pp. 1650-1659 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte R. Pennington ◽  
Daniel J. Shaw ◽  
Jennifer Adams ◽  
Phoebe Kavanagh ◽  
Holly Reed ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Conjunction Search ◽  
Social Drinkers

scholarly journals Where's the wine? Heavy social drinkers show attentional bias towards alcohol in a visual search conjunction task

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlotte Rebecca Pennington ◽  
Daniel Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Consumption ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Short Form ◽  
Drinking Motives ◽  
Conjunction Search ◽  
Internal Reliability ◽  
Social Drinkers ◽  
Visual Probe ◽  
Measured Response

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.

scholarly journals Reading problems and their connection with visual search and attention: The search for a cause continues

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heida Maria Sigurdardottir ◽  
Hilma Ros Omarsdóttir ◽  
Anna Sigridur Valgeirsdottir
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Internal Control ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Conjunction Search ◽  
Reading Problems ◽  
Visual Stream ◽  
Attentional Processes ◽  
Search Tasks ◽  
Reading Abilities ◽  
Gating Mechanism

Attention has been hypothesized to act as a sequential gating mechanism for the orderly processing of letters in words. These same visuo-attentional processes are assumed to partake in some but not all visual search tasks. In the current study, 60 adults with varying degrees of reading abilities, ranging from expert readers to severely impaired dyslexic readers, completed an attentionally demanding visual conjunction search task thought to heavily rely on the dorsal visual stream. A visual feature search task served as an internal control. According to the dorsal view of dyslexia, reading problems should go hand in hand with specific problems in visual conjunction search – particularly elevated conjunction search slopes (time per search item) – which would be interpreted as a problem with visual attention. Results showed that reading problems were associated with slower visual search, especially conjunction search. However, problems with reading were not associated with increased conjunction search slopes but instead with increased conjunction search intercepts, traditionally not interpreted as reflecting attentional processes. Our data are hard to reconcile with hypothesized problems in dyslexia with the serial moving of an attentional spotlight across a visual scene or a page of text.

Attentional bias in methamphetamine users: a visual search task study

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 517-525
Author(s):  
Yushang Huang ◽  
Ziwei Liu ◽  
Huichao Ji ◽  
Ziyi Duan ◽  
Huabin Ling ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Visual Search ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Visual Search Task

Attentional bias associated with alcohol cues: differences between heavy and occasional social drinkers

2001 ◽  
Vol 157 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Townshend J. ◽  
Duka T.
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Social Drinkers ◽  
Alcohol Cues

scholarly journals Alcohol-related Attentional Bias Variability and Conflicting Automatic Associations

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 204380871877963 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Gladwin ◽  
Matthijs Vink
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Implicit Associations ◽  
Risky Drinking ◽  
Stimulus Interval ◽  
Social Drinkers ◽  
Visual Probe ◽  
Single Target ◽  
Automatic Associations ◽  
Attentional Responses

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.

scholarly journals Training Top-Down Attention Improves Performance on a Triple-Conjunction Search Task

PLoS ONE ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. e9127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Farhan Baluch ◽  
Laurent Itti
Keyword(s):  
Search Task ◽  
Conjunction Search ◽  
Top Down

Effects of 0.4g/kg alcohol on attentional bias and alcohol-seeking behaviour in heavy and moderate social drinkers

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (7) ◽  
pp. 1017-1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gordon Fernie ◽  
Paul Christiansen ◽  
Jon C Cole ◽  
Abigail K Rose ◽  
Matt Field
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Social Drinkers ◽  
Alcohol Seeking

scholarly journals Alcohol attention bias in 14-16 year old adolescents: an eye tracking study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Casey McGivern ◽  
David Curran ◽  
Donncha Hanna
Keyword(s):  
Alcohol Use ◽  
Eye Tracking ◽  
Attentional Bias ◽  
Attention Bias ◽  
Stimulus Presentation ◽  
Risk Identification ◽  
Fixation Time ◽  
Theoretical Understanding ◽  
Social Drinkers ◽  
Social Drinking

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.

scholarly journals Dynamics of Feature-based Attentional Selection during Color–Shape Conjunction Search

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (12) ◽  
pp. 1773-1787 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeongmi Lee ◽  
Carly J. Leonard ◽  
Steven J. Luck ◽  
Joy J. Geng
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Neurons ◽  
Search Task ◽  
Attentional Selection ◽  
Conjunction Search ◽  
Attentional Processing ◽  
Active Suppression ◽  
Target Shape ◽  
Feature Based

Feature-based attentional selection is accomplished by increasing the gain of sensory neurons encoding target-relevant features while decreasing that of other features. But how do these mechanisms work when targets and distractors share features? We investigated this in a simplified color–shape conjunction search task using ERP components (N2pc, PD, and SPCN) that index lateralized attentional processing. In Experiment 1, we manipulated the presence and frequency of color distractors while holding shape distractors constant. We tested the hypothesis that the color distractor would capture attention, requiring active suppression such that processing of the target can continue. Consistent with this hypothesis, we found that color distractors consistently captured attention, as indexed by a significant N2pc, but were reactively suppressed (indexed by PD). Interestingly, when the color distractor was present, target processing was sustained (indexed by SPCN), suggesting that the dynamics of attentional competition involved distractor suppression interlinked with sustained target processing. In Experiment 2, we examined the contribution of shape to the dynamics of attentional competition under similar conditions. In contrast to color distractors, shape distractors did not reliably capture attention, even when the color distractor was very frequent and attending to target shape would be beneficial. Together, these results suggest that target-colored objects are prioritized during color–shape conjunction search, and the ability to select the target is delayed while target-colored distractors are actively suppressed.

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