title: Alcohol-related attentional bias in problem drinkers with the flicker change blindness paradigm.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow G12 8QB, Scotland, United Kingdom. barry@psy.gla.ac.uk
authors.forename: Barry T
authors.initials: BT
authors.lastname: Jones
authors.forename: Gillian
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Bruce
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Livingstone
authors.forename: Eunice
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Reed
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; D010775:Photic Stimulation; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D014796:Visual Perception / Q000502:physiology*