Abstract:
Background: Alcohol use disorder (AUD) causes widespread difficulties in health and social life, not only for the concerned individuals, but for the whole society. Attentional bias (AB) was shown to have a strong impact on the course of AUD. Because of contradicting results in the past, we tested whether an AB is detectable by means of a new method, the Attention Modulation by Salience Task (AMST). This method can account for early and late onset differences in the reaction time (RT) towards high and low salient pictures, negative and positive emotional pictures, and, for the first time, also towards alcohol-related and neutral pictures. We hypothesized differences in the RT of alcohol dependent (AD) patients compared to healthy controls (HC) towards alcohol-related and high salient pictures.
Methods: 31 AD treatment-seeking patients (12 females) from the University Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the University of Tübingen and 30 HC (14 females) answered several psychological questionnaires, before performing the AMST. The AMST is a dual task, where participants have to react to tones, while being distracted from different pictures. All pictures were subsequently rated by each participant. We used linear mixed effects models to test for a main effect of group and stimulus type and interaction effect. Group differences in stimulus ratings were investigated by Mann-Whitney-U Tests.
Results: No AB towards alcohol-related pictures could be detected in AD patients with the AMST. In the salience condition, the high salient (non-alcohol-related) pictures lead to a significant slowing in RT in tone 1 in HC participants, but in tone 2 in the AD patients. AD patients comprised a lower accuracy in their reactions overall. The AD patients rated alcohol-related pictures significantly more negatively than HC did, but there was no difference in the salience rating. Risk characteristics such as anxiety, neuroticism, impulsivity or depression symptoms did not correlate positively with a higher AB.
Conclusion: An AB towards alcohol-related pictures could not be found by the AMST in AD patients. The finding of a later processing of salience could be a hint to the findings of previous studies, which stated alterations in the salience network of AD patients. Future studies might help to elucidate, if this finding in the AMST is stable in a larger sample and if it is a predictor of later therapy outcome.
