Alcohol abusers' and nonabusers' distraction by alcohol and concern-related stimuli.
Alcohol abusers' and nonabusers' attentional distraction for neutral, alcohol-related, and concern-related (personally relevant) words was assessed with a word-word color-naming task. Abusers, unlike nonabusers, showed greater attentional distraction for alcohol-related than concern-related words. Exploratory analyses indicated that abusers who were more distracted by alcohol-related than concern-related stimuli (i.e., "alcohol distracted") responded more slowly to neutral words than "concern-distracted" participants. The results suggest that the relative degree of distraction by alcohol versus other personally relevant stimuli holds promise for understanding the cognitive and motivational processes underlying alcohol abuse.
Cox
W M
WM
School of Psychology, University of Wales, Bangor, Gwynedd, UK. m.cox@bangor.ac.uk
Blount
J P
JP
Rozak
A M
AM
D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000523:psychology* / Q000534:rehabilitation; D001294:Attitude to Health; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006760:Hospitalization; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009042:Motivation; D011897:Random Allocation; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014825:Vocabulary