BACKGROUND AND AIMS Research indicates that high consumers of alcohol exhibit attentional bias (AB) towards alcohol-related cues, suggestive of a cognitive mechanism that might drive substance seeking. Many tasks that measure AB (e.g., visual probe, addiction Stroop), however, are limited by their reliance on non-appetitive control cues, the serial presentation of stimuli, and their poor internal reliability. The current study employed a visual conjunction search (VCS) task capable of presenting multiple alcoholic and non-alcoholic appetitive cues simultaneously to assess whether social drinkers attend selectively to alcoholic stimuli. To assess the construct validity of this task, we examined whether alcohol consumption and related problems, subjective craving, and drinking motives predict alcohol-specific AB. DESIGN & SETTING A VCS task was performed in a laboratory setting, which required participants to detect the presence of appetitive alcoholic (wine, beer) and non-alcoholic (cola, lemonade) targets within arrays of matching and non-matching distractors. PARTICIPANTS Data from 99 participants were assessed (MAge = 20.77, SD = 2.98; 64 [65%] females), with 81.8% meeting the threshold for harmful alcohol consumption (MAUDIT = 12.89, SD = 5.79). MEASUREMENTS Self-reports of alcohol consumption and related problems (AUDIT), subjective craving (Alcohol Craving Questionnaire Short Form) and drinking motives (Drinking Motives Questionnaire Short Form) were obtained, and the VCS task measured response times for the correct detection of alcoholic and non-alcoholic targets. FINDINGS Participants were significantly quicker to detect alcoholic relative to non-alcoholic appetitive targets (p < .001, dz = .41), which was predicted positively by AUDIT scores (p = .013, R2 = .06%). The VCS task achieved excellent reliability (α > .79), superior to other paradigms. CONCLUSIONS The visual conjunction search task appears to be a highly reliable method for assessing alcohol-related attentional bias and shows that heavy social drinkers prioritise alcoholic cues in their immediate environment.

中文翻译：

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酒在哪儿？重度社交饮酒者在视觉联合搜索任务中表现出对酒精的注意力偏见

背景和目的 研究表明，大量饮酒者对酒精相关线索表现出注意力偏向 (AB)，这表明可能会驱动物质寻求的认知机制。然而，许多测量 AB 的任务（例如，视觉探测、成瘾 Stroop）受到它们对非食欲控制线索的依赖、刺激的连续呈现以及它们内部可靠性差的限制。目前的研究采用了视觉联合搜索 (VCS) 任务，该任务能够同时呈现多个酒精和非酒精食欲线索，以评估社交饮酒者是否选择性地参与酒精刺激。为了评估这项任务的结构效度，我们检查了饮酒和相关问题、主观渴望和饮酒动机是否能预测特定于酒精的 AB。设计 ＆设置 VCS 任务是在实验室环境中执行的，该任务要求参与者检测匹配和非匹配干扰物阵列中是否存在令人食欲不振的酒精（葡萄酒、啤酒）和非酒精（可乐、柠檬水）目标。参与者 评估了 99 名参与者的数据（MAge = 20.77，SD = 2.98；64 [65%] 名女性），其中 81.8% 达到有害饮酒的阈值（MAUDIT = 12.89，SD = 5.79）。测量 获得酒精消费和相关问题（审计）、主观渴望（酒精渴望问卷简表）和饮酒动机（饮酒动机问卷简表）的自我报告，并且 VCS 任务测量了正确检测酒精和酒精的响应时间。非酒精目标。结果 与非酒精性食欲目标相比，参与者检测酒精性的速度明显更快（p < .001，dz = .41），这被 AUDIT 分数预测为正（p = .013，R2 = .06%）。VCS 任务实现了出色的可靠性 (α > .79)，优于其他范式。结论 视觉联合搜索任务似乎是评估与酒精相关的注意力偏差的一种高度可靠的方法，并表明重度社交饮酒者优先考虑他们周围环境中的酒精线索。