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A Prediction Error-driven Retrieval Procedure for Destabilizing and Rewriting Maladaptive Reward Memories in Hazardous Drinkers

A Prediction Error-driven Retrieval Procedure for Destabilizing and Rewriting Maladaptive Reward Memories in Hazardous Drinkers

Published on: January 5, 2018

Alcohol-related words are distracting to both alcohol abusers and non-abusers in the Stroop colour-naming task

D Bauer¹, W M Cox

¹Finch University of Health Sciences/Chicago Medical School, Illinois, USA.

Addiction (Abingdon, England)

|February 2, 1999

Abstract

Aim:

To compare alcohol abusers' and non-abusers' distraction for alcohol-related and emotional words, controlling for emotional valence of those words.

Design And Method:

The experiment compared 20 alcohol abusers and 20 non-abusers in terms of performance on a computerized Stroop colour-naming test using alcohol-related and non-alcohol-related words.

Findings:

Abusers rated the alcohol stimuli greater in emotional valence than the emotional stimuli. Therefore, differences in emotional-valence ratings between the two groups were statistically controlled. Against expectation, both alcohol abusers and non-abusers were more distracted by alcohol stimuli than by positive or negative emotional stimuli.

Conclusions:

The results indicate that alcohol words are distracting for drinkers in general, and this may indicate a high level of salience for these kinds of stimuli.

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