Abstract
Rationale
Dominant theoretical models postulate the presence of an automatic attentional bias (AB) towards alcohol-related stimuli in alcohol use disorder, such AB constituting a core feature of this disorder. An early alcohol AB has been documented in subclinical populations such as binge drinking (i.e., a drinking pattern prevalent in youth and characterized by repeated alternation between alcohol intoxications and withdrawals, generating cerebral consequences). However, the automatic nature of AB remains to be established.
Objectives
We investigated the automatic nature of AB in binge drinkers through the saccadic choice task. This eye-tracking paradigm consistently highlights the extremely fast and involuntary saccadic responses elicited by faces in humans, relative to other object categories. Through an alcohol-related adaptation of the saccadic choice task, we tested whether the early and automatic capture of attentional resources elicited by faces can also be found for alcohol-related stimuli in binge drinkers, as predicted by theoretical models.
Methods
Forty-three binge drinkers and 44 control participants performed two versions of the saccadic choice task. In the original version, two images (a face, a vehicle) were displayed on the left and right side of the screen respectively. Participants had to perform a saccade as fast as possible towards the target stimulus (either face or vehicle). In the alcohol-related version, the task was identical, but the images were an alcoholic beverage and a non-alcoholic stimulus.
Results
We replicated the automatic attraction towards faces in both groups, as faces generated higher saccadic accuracy, speed, and amplitude than vehicles, as well as higher corrective saccade proportion. Concerning the alcohol-related adaptation of the task, groups did not differ for the accuracy, speed, and amplitude of the first saccade towards alcohol. However, binge drinkers differed from controls regarding the proportion of corrective saccade towards non-alcoholic stimuli after an error saccade towards alcohol, suggesting the presence of an alcohol disengagement bias specific to binge drinkers.
Conclusions
Alcohol-related AB in binge drinkers is not characterized by an early and automatic hijacking of attention towards alcohol. This AB rather relies on later and more controlled processing stages, namely a difficulty to disengage attentional resources from alcohol-related stimuli.
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Data Availability
Raw data of the present study are available upon request.
Notes
We performed correlations between alcohol consumption during the day before the experiment (i.e., number of alcohol units) and alcohol-related AB, since previous studies showed that acute alcohol consumption could induce alcohol-related AB in social drinkers (Duka & Townshend, 2004). For the alcohol vs. flower task, results showed no correlation with the accuracy of the first saccade (r = .180, p = .103), the proportion of corrective saccade (r = .148, p = .183), the latency of the first saccade (r = − .087, p = .432), or the latency of the corrective saccade (r = .113, p = .307).
Alcohol-related pictures presented higher relative luminance (0.51 ± 0.12 vs. 0.42 ± 0.12; t62 = 2.943, p = .005, d = .736) than flower pictures, but they were matched on RMS contrast (p = .394). This resulted in 72% of trials containing a pair of stimuli with alcohol-related pictures showing higher relative luminance than flower pictures. This difference however did not interfere with participants’ performance, as saccadic reaction time of the first saccade did not correlate with the relative luminance of the picture fixated (r = − .060, p = .576).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Alexia Havelange for her help in data acquisition.
Funding
Fonds De La Recherche Scientifique—FNRS, Agence Nationale de la Recherche, ANR-15-IDEX-02. Pierre Maurage (Senior Research Associate) and Zoé Bollen (Junior Research Associate) are supported by the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS). This work has been supported by CerCoG IDEX of the University of Grenoble Alpes in the framework of the “Investissements d’avenir” program of the French National Research Agency (grant number ANR-15-IDEX-02).
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Bollen, Z., Kauffmann, L., Guyader, N. et al. Does alcohol automatically capture drinkers’ attention? Exploration through an eye-tracking saccadic choice task. Psychopharmacology 240, 271–282 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-023-06314-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-023-06314-w