title: A flicker paradigm for inducing change blindness reveals alcohol and cannabis information processing biases in social users.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To apply a new paradigm using transient changes to visual scenes to explore information processing biases relating to "social" levels of alcohol and cannabis use.
  
  
  METHODS
  Male and female student volunteers (n = 200) not self-reporting substance-related problems.
  
  
  METHODS
  Quiet testing areas throughout the university campus.
  
  
  METHODS
  A flicker paradigm, for inducing change blindness with lighter and heavier social users of alcohol (experiment 1, n= 100) and social users and non-users of cannabis (experiment 2, n= 100), explored the associations between habitual level of use and the latency to detection of a single substance-related or neutral change made to a scene of grouped substance-related and neutral objects.
  
  
  METHODS
  Alcohol use was measured as the number of units of the heaviest drinking day from the previous week; cannabis use as the number of months of use in previous 12. Change-detection latency comparisons were used to evaluate processing biases.
  
  
  RESULTS
  In both experiments, (i) heavier social users detected substance-related changes quicker than lighter and non-users; (ii) lighter and non-users detected substance-neutral changes quicker than heavier users; (iii) heavier social users detected substance-related quicker than substance-neutral changes; and (iv) lighter and non-users detected substance-neutral changes quicker than substance-related changes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Alcohol and cannabis processing biases are found at levels of social use, have the potential to influence future consumption and for this reason merit further research.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QQ, Scotland, UK. barry@psy.gla.ac.uk
authors.forename: Barry T
authors.initials: BT
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Ben C
authors.initials: BC
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Helena
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Nicola
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Copley
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000523:psychology*; D019973:Alcohol-Related Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D002189:Marijuana Abuse / Q000523:psychology*; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time; D012919:Social Behavior; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*