Attentional Bias In Male College Smokers And Its Modification

Attentional bias is defined as the tendency to selectively direct processing resources to special stimuli when several stimuli compete for these resources.It includes three cognitive mechanisms: facilitated attention,difficulty in attention disengagement and attentional avoidance.Facilitated attention and difficulty in attention disengagement are related to the formation and maintenance of substance addiction,while an avoidance to special stimuli,which might be a successful outcome of a substance addiction cessation attempt.A large number of studies have shown that smokers show greater attentional bias to cigarette-related stimuli than non-smokers,but it is still not clear which cognitive mechanism is responsible.As a new treatment technology,attentional bias modification has been widely used in the treatment of emotional disorders and achieved certain results.This technology has begun to attract attention in the field of substance addiction.Subjective craving has been proved to be significantly positively correlated with attentional bias,and both of them are closely related to addiction behavior.Attentional bias modification can achieve the effect of addiction intervention by improving the attentional bias and subjective craving.But at present,the intervention effect of attentional bias modification to attentional bias and its cognitive mechanism and craving level of smokers is not clear,whether the intervention effect can transfer to other untrained tasks has not been agreed yet.Therefore,we attempt to explore these issues with three experiments.In experiment 1,using the cue-target paradigm to detect attentional bias and its cognitive mechanism to cigarette-related stimuli of male college smokers and non-smokers in two stimulus onset asynchrony(SOA: 200 ms,500ms).Then smokers were assessed by the Fagerstrom Test of Nicotine Dependence and the Brief Questionnaire of Smoking Urges.The results were that male college smokers showed significant positive attentional bias to cigarette-related stimuli in two SOA,when SOA was 200 ms,the facilitated attention was significant higher than non-smokers.when SOA was 500 ms,the difficulty in attention disengagement appeared.There was no significant difference in attentional bias between cigarette-related stimuli and neutral stimuli of non-smoker.In addition,the FTND score was positively correlated with attentional bias score and difficulty in attention disengagement score in 200 ms,while QSU-B score was positively correlated with almost all attentional bias index scores.In experiment 2,the visual probe task and the modified visual probe task were used to detect the attentional bias to cigarette-related stimuli of smokers and its intervention effect.The results showed that after three sessions of training,the attentional bias of the training group decreased significantly in two SOA,when SOA was 200 ms,the facilitated attention of the training group decreased significantly,the difficulty in attention disengagement decreased significantly in 500 ms While there was no significant difference in the control group before and after the training.In experiment 3,the cue-target paradigm and stroop task were used to detect the transfer effect of the attentional bias modification,the results showed that the intervention effect had to transfer to the cue-target paradigm,but not the stroop task.The current study provides preliminary evidence suggesting that male college smokers show significant higher attentional bias to cigarette-related stimuli than non-smokers,when SOA is 200 ms,attentional bias is caused by facilitated attention,while difficulty in attention disengagement is responsible in 500 ms.Attentional bias modification can decrease attentional bias to cigarette-related stimuli of male college smokers,it is effective in reducing facilitated attention in 200 ms and difficulty in attention disengagement in 500 ms,but it was ineffective on smoking craving.In addition,this effect of attentional bias modification can transfer to similar tasks,but not to different tasks.