Internal reliability of the alcohol-related visual probe task is increased by utilising personalised stimuli and eye-tracking.

BACKGROUND

In the current study, we investigated whether the internal reliability of the visual probe task measure of attentional bias for substance-related cues could be improved by incorporating eye-tracking methods and personalised stimuli.

METHOD

Sixty social drinkers completed two visual probe tasks: one with a broad range of different alcohol pictures, the other containing only images of the participants' preferred drink. Attentional bias was inferred from manual reaction times to probes replacing the pictures, and from the duration of eye movement fixations towards the pictures (gaze dwell time).

RESULTS

Internal reliability was highest for personalised (versus general) alcohol stimuli, and for eye-tracking (versus manual reaction time) measures of attentional bias. The internal reliability of both reaction time (α=.73) and gaze dwell time measures (α=.76) of attentional bias for personalised alcohol stimuli was acceptable. Internal reliability of indices of attentional bias for general alcohol stimuli was inferior, although better for the gaze dwell time (α=.51) compared to the reaction time measure (α=.19). Attentional bias towards personalised stimuli was larger than bias to general stimuli, but only for the reaction time measure. There were no statistically significant associations between measures of attentional bias and alcohol consumption or craving.

CONCLUSIONS

Adopting personalised stimuli and eye movement monitoring significantly improves the internal reliability of the alcohol-related visual probe task.