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The Role of Attentional Bias in Substance AbuseArcadia University, University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania, Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center There has been much recent interest in the idea that drug users show biased attention toward drug-related events. Because drug stimuli produce conditioned responses that may motivate drug taking, biased attention toward these cues may play an important role in drug use and relapse following treatment. The performance of drug users on the Stroop task and visual dot-probe task has been interpreted as demonstrating attentional bias toward drug cues specific to an individual’s drug use history. However, studies often fail to include necessary control groups or comparison stimuli, thereby making it difficult to definitively conclude that reported results reflect a specific attentional response to personally relevant drug events. Although promising, these initial studies need to be followed up with better controlled demonstrations of attentional bias and with studies linking bias levels to other measures of drug taking.
Key Words: attentional bias • substance abuse • emotional Stroop task • dot-probe task
Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, Vol. 3, No. 4,
243-260 (2004) This article has been cited by other articles:
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