Skip Navigation

Alcohol and Alcoholism 2009 44(5):458-463; doi:10.1093/alcalc/agp056
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Vollstädt-Klein, S.
Right arrow Articles by Kiefer, F.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Vollstädt-Klein, S.
Right arrow Articles by Kiefer, F.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?


© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Medical Council on Alcohol. All rights reserved

Avoidance of Alcohol-Related Stimuli Increases During the Early Stage of Abstinence in Alcohol-Dependent Patients

Sabine Vollstädt-Klein*,{dagger}, Sabine Loeber{dagger}, Christoph von der Goltz, Karl Mann and Falk Kiefer

Department of Addictive Behaviour and Addiction Medicine at the University of Heidelberg, Central Institute of Mental Health, J5, D-68159 Mannheim, Germany

* Corresponding author: Department of Addictive Behaviour and Addiction Medicine at the University of Heidelberg, Central Institute of Mental Health, J5, D-68159 Mannheim, Germany. Tel: +49-621-1703-3912; Fax: +49-621-1703-3505; E-mail: s.vollstaedt-klein{at}zi-mannheim.de

Received 13 February 2009; first review notified 16 April 2009; in revised form 7 August 2009; accepted 7 August 2009


  Abstract

Aims: The aim of this study was to analyse initial orienting processes as well as maintenance of attention towards alcohol cues in recently detoxified alcoholics and light social drinkers. Furthermore, we investigated the influence of pre-treatment alcohol consumption and abstinence duration onto alcohol-related attentional bias. Methods: We used an alcohol-visual-dot-probe-task with two different stimulus onset asynchronies (SOA) to examine processes of initial orienting and maintenance of attention separately (50 and 500 ms SOA). Results: With short SOA, we found a positive attentional bias towards alcohol cues in alcohol-dependent patients and light social drinkers that was positively associated with pre-treatment alcohol consumption in alcoholics. Using a longer SOA, a negative attentional bias was found in light social drinkers and in patients abstinent for more than 2 weeks indicating alcohol stimuli avoidance. In patients, we found a negative correlation between attentional bias and duration of abstinence. Conclusions: After initial visual orienting towards alcohol-related stimuli, light social drinkers as well as longer abstinent alcohol-dependent patients disengage their attention. In patients, this disengagement increased during the first 3 weeks after detoxification indicating assimilation to the attentional bias pattern of light social drinkers.

{dagger}Contributed equally to this work.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.