National Addiction Management Service, Institute of Mental Health, Singapore 539747, Singapore.
Family Medicine & Primary Care, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, Nanyang Technological University Singapore, Singapore 308232, Singapore.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2019 Sep 12;16(18):3389. doi: 10.3390/ijerph16183389.
Advances in experimental psychology have provided evidence for the presence of attentional and approach biases in individuals with substance use disorders. Traditionally, reaction time tasks, such as the Stroop or the Visual Probe Task, are commonly used in the assessment of attention biases. The Visual Probe Task has been criticized for its poor reliability, and other research has highlighted that variations remain in the paradigms adopted. However, a gap remains in the published literature, as there have not been any prior studies that have reviewed stimulus timings for different substance use disorders. Such a review is pertinent, as the nature of the task might affect its effectiveness. The aim of this paper was in comparing the different methods used in the Visual Probe Task, by focusing on tasks that have been used for the most highly prevalent substance disorders-that of opiate use, cannabis use and stimulant use disorders. A total of eight published articles were identified for opioid use disorders, three for cannabis use disorders and four for stimulant use disorders. As evident from the synthesis, there is great variability in the paradigm adopted, with most articles including only information about the nature of the stimulus, the number of trials, the timings for the fixation cross and the timings for the stimulus set. Future research examining attentional biases among individuals with substance use disorders should take into consideration the paradigms that are commonly used and evaluate the optimal stimulus and stimulus-onset asynchrony timings.
实验心理学的进展为物质使用障碍个体中存在注意和趋近偏差提供了证据。传统上，反应时任务，如斯特鲁普或视觉探测任务，常用于评估注意偏差。视觉探测任务因其可靠性差而受到批评，其他研究也强调采用的范式存在差异。然而，发表的文献中仍然存在空白，因为没有任何先前的研究审查过不同物质使用障碍的刺激时间。这样的审查是必要的，因为任务的性质可能会影响其效果。本文的目的是通过关注最常见的物质障碍——阿片类物质使用障碍、大麻使用障碍和兴奋剂使用障碍的任务，比较视觉探测任务中使用的不同方法。总共确定了 8 篇关于阿片类物质使用障碍的已发表文章，3 篇关于大麻使用障碍的文章和 4 篇关于兴奋剂使用障碍的文章。从综合来看，所采用的范式存在很大的可变性，大多数文章仅包含关于刺激性质、试验次数、注视十字线时间和刺激集时间的信息。未来研究应考虑到常用的范式，评估最佳刺激和刺激起始异步时间，以检查物质使用障碍个体的注意偏差。
