Symposium 4, Sunday Sept. 23rd 2 pm–3.30 pm; Room: Lecture Hall 4
Alcohol cognitions in social drinkers: State or trait markers of vulnerability?: Chairperson: Conrod P (UK)
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Abstract |
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Attentional and memory biases to drug-related information have been shown to be associated with consumption patterns of that drug. It has been argued that these implicit cognition measures tap the strength of memory associations and automatic aspects of cognition; whereas explicitly measured cognitions may reflect global beliefs that involve more controlled cognitive processes that may be more influenced by social desirability measures than implicit cognitions. Strong accessibility of drug responses and attentional biases to drug cues are posited to reflect the accessibility of drug-related thoughts upon presentation of drug cues in the real world. What is unclear is whether such biases reflect past experience with substances, current level of dependence, or cognitive vulnerability to substance misuse. This symposium will present a series of studies investigating the presence of attentional and memory biases to alcohol in young social drinkers, to elucidate the role of such cognitive processes on alcohol-related behaviour and vulnerability to alcohol abuse.Dr Hugh Garavan will present a study entitled, ‘Converging evidence that attentional biases towards alcohol stimuli predict risk of dependence’, demonstrating that young social drinkers demonstrate attentional biases to alcohol cues that are similar to those demonstrated by alcohol dependent patients. Dr Patricia Conrod will present a study entitled, ‘Priming effects of stress on alcohol-related cognitions, subjective, physiologic and behavioural responses’, demonstrating that personality and stress prior to exposure to alcohol cues affects susceptibility to alcohol cognitions. And Brian Eastwood will present a study entitled, ‘Do Personality Targeted Interventions Affect Implicit Alcohol Cognitions?’ Laurence Reed will serve as a discussant for this symposium.
Presentation S4-1
Converging evidence that attentional biases towards alcohol stimuli predict risk of dependence
Garavan H, Roberts Hester R, Kuebler A (Ireland)
Attentional biases towards salient drug-related information have been shown to be characteristic of drug dependence. Variants on the classic STROOP task in which the processing of irrelevant alcohol-related words or images must be suppressed have shown to predict relapse in those attempting to abstain from alcohol. We investigated these biases in a group of social drinkers to determine if similar attentional biases might predict risk of dependence as assessed by the AUDIT, a measure of alcohol consumption, drinking behaviour, and alcohol related problems and which has previously been used as a screen for identifying those at risk of developing an alcohol-use disorder. Participants (n = 40, age: 23 ± 3.3) completed a STROOP task in which alcohol-related (e.g., beer, vodka), music related (e.g., violin, banjo), neutral words (e.g., chain, boots), and coloured ‘XXXX’s were presented in coloured fonts and subjects were required to identify the font colour. To provide converging evidence, subjects also completed a working memory task in which a recall probe stimulus was immediately preceded by either an irrelevant alcohol or soft-drink image.
Results revealed significant correlations between AUDIT scores and performance on the distracting alcohol trials of both the STROOP and working memory tasks.
These results suggest that the salience attributed to drug-related stimuli that is characteristic of dependence may also be evident prior to the transition from recreational to problem drinking. Moreover, attentional biases towards alcohol stimuli may aid the identification of those most at risk of developing drinking problems
Presentation S4-2
Priming effects of stress on alcohol-related cognitions, subjective, physiologic and behavioural responses
Conrod P, Castellanos N (UK)
Clinical data suggest that stress plays an important role in drinking behavior and relapse to alcohol abuse. The tension reduction theory of alcohol use suggests that alcohol use/abuse is learned through negative reinforcement and has been shown to be valid for explaining drinking patterns of anxiety-prone individuals. A recent focus on alternative theories of addiction, particularly neurobiologic and cognitive-motivational theories, has led to the hypothesis that stress may also influence drinking behavior through an incentive motivation process. The current study examines the effects of stress and alcohol in activating alcohol-related cognitions, behavioural impulsivity and subjective emotional states in men and women. Healthy male and female social drinkers (n = 129) between the ages of 18 and 25 years were recruited from the community to participate in a study examining subjective, cognitive and behavioural responses to different types of stressors. Participants were randomly assigned either to (1) a no stress condition (2) a social stress condition involving a self-disclosing speech and (3) a physical stress condition involving a mild electrical shock. Participants were then further randomised to receive a placebo dose of alcohol or a moderate-high dose of alcohol. Cued alcohol memory responses were measured immediately following stress administration using the Implicit Cognition Task (Stacy, 1997). Subjective, behavioural and physiologic measures of arousal and impulsivity were measured before and after randomisation to and receipt of stress and alcohol conditions.
Results revealed personality-specific effects on stress-induced activation of behavioural inhibition, arousal and alcohol-cognitions.
The findings suggest that impulsive individuals may be more sensitive to the priming effect of stress on alcohol-related behaviour, and that this is not mediated through a tension-reduction process
Presentation S4-3
Do personality targeted interventions affect implicit alcohol cognitions?
Eastwood B, Sully L, Catellanos N, Conrod P (UK)
Memory association theorists (e.g. Leigh and Stacy, 1993; Stacy et al., 2000; Stacy, 1997) have demonstrated that the degree to which drug-related responses elicited by ambiguous cues is strongly associated with consumption patterns of that drug. The purpose of the present paper was twofold: to explore the relationship between personality risk factors for alcohol misuse and alcohol-related cognitions; to examine the effects of personality targeted interventions on substance misuse and drug-related cognitions. A baseline sample of 2696 adolescents yielded a treatment sample of 423 youth at risk for alcohol misuse (224 intervention, 199 control) who were assessed on personality, substance misuse and drug-related cognitions. Follow-up assessments were collected at 6, 12, 18, 24 months. We examined whether implicit cognitions are reduced in participants who complete personality targeted intervention sessions compared with no intervention control group. Using path analyses and growth curve analyses, we also examined whether these changes in cognition parallel changes in alcohol misuse and the direction of the relationship between these two measures. Implications are discussed relating to mechanisms of change resulting from personality-targeted interventions and the role of implicit alcohol cognition in adolescent drinking behaviour.
Presentation S4-4
Mood induction effects on implicit alcohol cognition in different types of internally motivated drinkers
Stewart SH, Birch C, Grant V, Wiers R, Klein R (Canada)
This talk will review the results of three recent experiments on mood-induced activation of implicit alcohol cognition in at risk undergraduate drinkers. The first two experiments focused on whether different mood states activate specific types of implicit alcohol cognition among undergraduates with enhancement (EM) vs coping (CM) drinking motives as assessed by the Drinking Motives Questionnaire-Revised (DMQ-R; Cooper, 1994). Participants completed a Stroop task in Experiment 1 (n = 81) and an Extrinsic Affective Simon Task (EAST; De Houwer, 2003b) in Experiment 2 (n = 79) after they were randomly assigned to listen to positive or sad musical mood induction procedures (MMIP). Consistent with hypotheses, only EM, and not CM, drinkers displayed an activation of implicit attention to alcohol cues (Experiment 1) and reward-alcohol implicit associations (Experiment 2) following exposure to the positive MMIP. None of the experimental groups, in either experiment, showed an activation of implicit alcohol processing following exposure to the sad MMIP, and this was contrary to hypotheses for CM drinkers. The third study examined whether the expected effects of a negative MMIP might be observed if there was a more specific match between motives and induced mood state for CM drinkers. Thus, we explored the impact of positive vs anxious MMIP on the alcohol Stroop performance of 48 undergraduates who drink either for EM or for motives involving coping with anxiety (CM-anxiety). Drinking motives were assessed with the modified DMQ-R (Grant et al., 2007) which separates CM-anxiety from CM-depression motives. Consistent with Experiment 1, only EM participants receiving the positive MMIP displayed an attentional bias towards alcohol. And, as hypothesized, only CM-anxiety participants receiving the anxious MMIP showed an attentional bias towards alcohol. Implications for designing motivation-matched early interventions for at risk undergraduate drinkers will be discussed.
Presentation S4-5
Automatic approach tendencies and attentional bias in heavy drinkers
Wiers RW, Schoenmakers T, Rinck M, Field M (The Netherlands)
Aims. Two studies were conducted to test the validity of models of automatic appetitive processes in addiction (Wiers, Bartholow, et al., 2007)
Methods. In a first study (Wiers, Rinck et al., submitted), we tested automatic approach vs avoidance action tendencies for alcohol, as compared with soft-drinks and general positive and negative stimuli in heavy and light drinkers (n = 109). We genotyped the heavy drinkers, for the OPRM1 polymorphism of the mu opioid receptor gene. We found that heavy drinkers showed stronger automatic approach tendencies than light drinkers and this was specific for alcohol stimuli. Heavy drinkers carrying a g-allele of the mu opioid receptor gene were much faster to pull alcohol pictures than to push them, indicating particularly strong approach action tendencies for alcohol in this subgroup. The same polymorphism was found to be related to cue-induced craving (Van den Wildenberg, Wiers, et al., 2007, ACER).
Results. In a second recent study, we (Schoenmakers, Wiers, Field, submitted) measured automatic approach tendencies toward alcohol stimuli after a moderate alcohol dose compared with a placebo drink (n = 23, within subjects comparison). Heavy drinkers' attentional bias (measured with a visual probe task and eye movements) was highest after the alcohol dose. Attentional bias and approach bias were strongly correlated after the alcohol dose, but not after the placebo, suggesting synchronization attentional bias and implicit approach tendencies after alcohol priming.
Conclusions. Results are discussed as supporting recent models on automatic appetitive processes in addiction (e.g., Wiers, Bartholow, et al., 2007, Pharmacol, Biochem, Behav.).