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

Barry T. Jones, Gillian Bruce, Steven Livingstone, Eunice Reed

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    62 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    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.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)171-177
    Number of pages7
    JournalPsychology of Addictive Behaviors
    Volume20
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Jun 2006

    Keywords

    • attentional bias
    • flicker paradigm
    • change blindness
    • problem drinkers
    • information processing bias

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