Non-Alcoholic Beverage Cues as Specific Comparison Images to Alcohol Image Cues

ABSTRACT

Background: Visual alcohol cues are often used to elicit craving (e.g., cue-reactivity), and selection of appropriate comparison cues is important to isolate the specific effect of craving for alcohol. Objectives: In the current study, via the development of a new set of non-alcoholic beverage cues, we examine measurement and methodological choices in testing alcohol images for cue-reactivity studies. Methods: The current project combined two independent studies of hazardous (Study 1; n = 80) and recent drinkers (Study 2; n = 244) recruited from Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants viewed either alcohol cues (Lovett, Ham, & Veilleux, 2015) or newly developed non-alcoholic beverage cues. We also randomly assigned people to rate the cues regarding motivational (e.g., affect, craving for alcohol, resistance to alcohol) responses or non-motivational features (e.g., artistry). Results: In Study 1, we included presentation of non-beverage objects, and found that beverages were rated as more positive, less negative and with higher craving than non-beverage objects. In the combined sample, we found that the alcohol beverage cues were associated with greater craving than non-alcoholic beverage cues, and that there were no differences between cue types on either positive or negative affect. We also found an interaction between drinking experience and cue type in predicting resistance to drinking. Conclusions: We conclude that the choice of control cues in alcohol cue-reactivity studies is important, and that the currently developed non-alcoholic beverage cue set provides an adequate control for alcohol beverage cues for use in cue-reactivity paradigms.

KEYWORDS:

• Alcohol
• craving
• cue-reactivity
• hazardous drinking
• photographs

Declaration of interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Funding

This study was supported by internal funding awarded to the first author.

Notes

1 Images available upon request.

2 We recognize that due to the addition of neutral objects cues in Study 1, the two studies are not identical, methodologically speaking; Study 1 included 30 images rather than 20, and participants' ratings to the beverage cues may have been influenced via comparison to the non-beverage object cues.