Using eye tracking to evaluate the impact of smartphone-delivered attentional bias modification training for smokers

Attentional bias modification (ABM) has been proposed to treat tobacco use disorder by reducing attentional bias (AB) to smoking-related cues. We sought to determine the extent to which AB to smoking cues, as measured by eye-tracking technology, was sensitive to multisession ABM among treatment-seeking adult smokers. The participants (N = 203; 74 women) completed 13 days of daily ABM or sham training using a smartphone, followed by 8 weeks of nicotine replacement therapy and cessation counseling. ABM and sham training were administered using the modified dot-probe task (i.e., neutral cues probed 100% of the time) and the unmodified dot-probe task (i.e., cue types probed equally), respectively. Eye gaze dwell time proportions to paired presentations of smoking and neutral cues were measured at baseline, 1 day post-ABM training, and 8 weeks post-ABM training. At baseline, younger, more dependent smokers and those with higher smoking satisfaction scores looked longer at smoking cues than neutral ones. ABM training resulted in greater gaze preference for the smoking cues than sham training at 1 day posttraining. Gaze preference for smoking cues was positively associated with AB to smoking cues as measured by reaction time during the laboratory dot-probe assessment. At 8 weeks posttraining, gaze preference was not associated with any of the smoking outcome measures. These findings suggest that multisession ABM training resulted in changes in AB by increasing time spent looking at neutral compared with smoking cues in the short term. However, this effect was not sustained and was not associated with smoking behavior outcomes. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).