Measuring attentional bias in an alcohol-related virtual environment: A feasibility study

Substance-relevant cues sometimes become the focus of attention and elicit substance-seeking behavior in the environment. This shift in attention allocation, called “attentional bias”, appears to be due to neurobiological and motivational processes leading alcohol-related stimuli to acquire incentive-motivational properties that can trigger craving and consumption (Field & Cox, 2008; Robinson & Berridge, 1993). Attentional biases have typically been assessed using attentional tasks such as the addiction Stroop task (Cox et al., 2006) or the visual probe task (van Hemel-Ruiter et al., 2016), sometimes coupled with eye-tracking devices (Bollen et al., 2020; van Duijvenbode et al., 2017). However, the presentation of one single pair of stimuli or another more or less complex pattern of stimuli cannot be considered an adequate reflection of the complexity of real-life substance use situations (Hertel & Mathews, 2011). To increase the ecological validity of the task, we jointly used an eye-tacking device during the immersion in a virtual environment that includes multiple alcohol-related cues. We investigated the specific cues that may be related to attentional bias during free exploration of an alcohol-related environment. Finally, we investigated whether attentional bias is related to subjective craving and alcohol consumption.To this end, 30 social drinkers were recruited and exposed to a virtual bar. All of them completed a set of questionnaires before and after the virtual experience, including a craving scale. The data actually allowed us to identify the relevant items for the study of attentional biases.