Measuring attentional bias in addiction: Validation of computerized indirect measures

Aims: The Emotional Stroop task is a frequently used and validated paradigm to measure attentional bias. In experimental studies on alcohol addiction, it has been used to demonstrate an attentional bias towards alcohol-related stimuli in addicts. In the task, participants have to name the print colour of different stimuli. Because this usually requires a verbal reaction, such as saying out loud the colour, the method is not well-suited for testing many participants simultaneously. Therefore, we sought to develop and validate different computerized tasks to assess attentional bias in alcohol addicts. The tasks include a standard word version of the Emotional Stroop Task, a simplified picture version, and a Dot Probe Task. The long-term goal of this study is to develop tasks that could be included in a routine assessment procedure during the treatment of alcohol patients.

Design: Both predictive validity and discriminative validity of the three tasks are tested. For the latter, task performance of a large group of alcohol patients is compared to performance of a psychosomatic patient control group. For the former, task performance of the alcohol patients before and after treatment is related to treatment progress and relapse probability.

Participants: 180 alcohol-dependent patients are tested at the beginning and at the end of their three-months treatment in an inpatient setting. 50 psychosomatic patients at the beginning of their four-to-six weeks treatment in an inpatient setting serve as control group.

Measurements: Reaction times on the Emotional Word Stroop task (including words related to alcoholic versus non-alcoholic beverages), as well as reaction times on the Emotional Picture Stroop task and the Dot Probe Task (both including pictures of alcoholic versus non-alcoholic beverages) are used as measures of attentional bias.

Findings: The findings will be reported.

Conclusions: Depending on the findings of this study, we will be able to give specific suggestions regarding the use of the different tasks for testing attentional bias in alcohol addicts, to be used in an inpatient clinical setting.