title: Alcohol-related cues reduce cognitive control in social drinkers.
abstract: Alcohol-related stimuli attract social drinkers' attention (attentional bias). We devised a dual task to test whether attentional biases to alcohol-related stimuli are modulated by cognitive control mechanisms. Sixteen nondependent healthy social drinkers were required to respond to the direction of a central arrow (target) and to ignore adjacent congruent (low cognitive load) or incongruent (high cognitive load) distracting arrows (flankers) in the presence of alcohol-related, neutral or plain grey backgrounds. Percentages of correct responses to the target and reaction time of correct responses (latency) were recorded. The difference score of the flanker effect (latency incongruent-latency congruent) between trials when backgrounds were alcohol-related relative to when they were neutral was also computed. Latencies increased in the presence of the alcohol-related images relative to both the neutral and the grey displays, but only under high cognitive load. Response accuracy did not show this significant difference. The flanker effect difference score correlated positively with the participants' average weekly alcohol intake. The data suggest that the presence of alcohol-associated stimuli attenuates cognitive control processes in social drinkers, an effect that was associated with the participants' average weekly alcohol intake.
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton, UK.
authors.forename: Kyriaki
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nikolaou
authors.forename: Matt
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Field
authors.forename: Theodora
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Duka
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000503:physiopathology; D001288:Attention; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D003463:Cues; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D011930:Reaction Time; D012201:Reward; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012919:Social Behavior; D012920:Social Behavior Disorders / Q000209:etiology* / Q000503:physiopathology; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D006113:United Kingdom; D055815:Young Adult