Attentional bias in adults with cannabis use disorders

ABSTRACT

There has been modest examination of attentional bias in individuals with cannabis use disorders. Clinical implications of this work are directly relevant to better informing extant evidence-based treatment for substance use disorders (e.g., relapse prevention) and/or developing novel interventions. The overarching aim of this investigation was to examine a novel attentional bias task in adults with cannabis use disorders. Participants were comprised of 25 adults (8 women: M age = 31, SD = 6.8; range = 22–45) with cannabis use disorders (n = 12) and controls (n = 13) without any current (past month) psychopathology. Relative to controls, adults with cannabis use disorders had greater attentional bias scores. These differences were present only at the 125-ms probe time, where the cannabis use disorders group showed greater attentional bias to cannabis cues than the control group (adjusted p = .001, cannabis use disorders mean = 59.9, control mean = −24.8, Cohen's d-effect size for 125 ms = 1.03). The cannabis use disorders group also reported significantly greater perceived stress and post-task stress scores than the control group, but stress was not related to attentional bias. This study informs understanding of the influence of cannabis cues on visual detection and reaction time under different cue-target onset times, as attentional bias was most prevalent under time pressure to detect the probe.

KEYWORDS:

• Cannabis
• marijuana
• attentional bias
• experimental task

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank Tara Watts, Sarly Vasquez, Zahra Kamdar, Ellen Desmarais, and Nuvan Rathnayaka for expert technical assistance conducting the research protocol. Portions of the data in this report were presented at the 2014 College of Problems on Drug Dependence annual convention in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Funding

This project was supported by funding from U.S. DHHS/NIH grants R21 DA 034825 and P50 DA 09262 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (SD Lane, JM Schmitz). Dr. Vujanovic acknowledges the support of NIH/University of Texas Clinical and Translational Sciences Award (KL2TR000370-07).