Maintenance of attention and pathological gambling.

Abstract

In the study of addiction, attentional bias refers to the observation that substance-related cues tend to capture the attention of experienced substance users. Attentional bias is a cognitive intermediate in the conditioned association between drug-related cues, craving, and relapse. Numerous studies have documented the existence of attentional bias for cues associated with substances. By contrast, few studies have investigated attentional bias in individuals with pathological gambling (PG) or problematic gambling. In this study, we sought to assess attentional bias at the level of maintenance of attention in a sample of pathological gamblers. Twenty-three pathological gamblers and 21 healthy volunteers performed the Visual Probe Task to compare attentional bias with gambling-related cues between individuals with PG and healthy volunteers. The measured of attentional bias was based on their reaction times (RTs) to probes replacing neutral and gambling-related cues (images). Second, we examined the correlation between PG severity and degree of attentional bias among individuals with PG. Results show that pathological gamblers, but not healthy volunteers, had attentional bias for gambling-related cues with exposure times that assess maintenance of attention. There was no correlation between PG severity and degree of attentional bias. Theoretical and clinical implications of these results are discussed.

Eye on the Prize: High-Risk Gamblers Show Sustained Selective Attention to Gambling Cues

“…Our finding that high-risk gamblers exhibit gambling-specific attentional biases corroborates previous work (Boyer & Dickerson, 2003;McCusker & Gettings, 1997;Vizcaino et al, 2013). In addition, it builds on prior work by pinpointing the attentional component involved in these biases (i.e., sustained attention rather than initial orienting) and by measuring the extent of these biases relative to established emotional distractors.…”

“…It makes sense that clinically meaningful biases be tied to later stages of processing, as earlier attentional biases are more fleeting and may have less enduring consequences. However, unlike the case in previous work (Baron et al, 1995;McCusker & Gettings, 1997;Molde et al, 2010;Vizcaino et al, 2013), there was some evidence of a (nonspecific) gambling bias, analogous to biases for negative distractors, in our low-risk gambler group. One reason we detected such a bias, where others have not, may be that we included both non-problem and low-risk gamblers as our control group, whereas others have used non-gamblers, non-problem gamblers, or a mixture of both (Baron et al, 1995;Brevers, Cleeremans, Tibboel et al, 2011;McCusker & Gettings, 1997;Molde et al, 2010;Vizcaino et al, 2013).…”

“…Gambling-specific biases were not anticipated in low-risk gamblers. From prior research with other clinical populations, biases were predicted to be most prominent at the level of attentional maintenance/disengagement effects (i.e., at the 800-ms lag; Koster, De Raedt, Goeleven, Franck, & Crombez, 2005;Olatunji et al, 2011;Vizcaino et al, 2013). Moreover, sustained, as opposed to initial, biases to gambling stimuli were expected to characterize high-risk gamblers given that attentional maintenance of gambling cues should theoretically be more problematic than transient bias, in which attentional resources are quickly recovered.…”

“…In contrast, in visual dot probe tasks, transient and more sustained biases can be discerned if cue durations are manipulated appropriately. Using a visual probe task, Vizcaino et al (2013) found that gamblers who met criteria for pathological gambling on the National Opinion Research Center DSM-IV Screen for Gambling Problems responded more quickly to dots cued by gambling-related stimuli than they did to non-gambling cues at exposure times that were indicative of a preferential attentional maintenance for gambling items. No differences in response times to gambling and non-gambling cued targets were seen in the control group of healthy volunteers.…”

Attentional biases in problem and non-problem gamblers

“…To date, the majority of the studies evaluating attentional biases have employed the addiction Stroop Task that is unanimously considered a measure of the early stages of cognitive processing (Cox et al, 2006). Other studies (e.g., Grant and Bowling, 2015;Vizcaino et al, 2013) found no bias in attentional engagement and demonstrated that gambling frequency is associated with the maintenance of attention when using gambling-related stimuli. A recent study (Brevers et al, 2011b) used an attentional paradigm that allows the evaluation of these two attentional components.…”