Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Feb;35(2):84-90.
doi: 10.1016/j.addbeh.2009.09.006. Epub 2009 Sep 11.

Alcohol cue reactivity task development

Carmen Pulido  1 , Sandra A Brown, Kevin Cummins, Martin P Paulus, Susan F Tapert
Affiliations

Alcohol cue reactivity task development

Carmen Pulido et al. Addict Behav. 2010 Feb.

Abstract

Background: The physiological and cognitive reactions provoked by alcohol cues, as compared to non-alcohol cues, can predict future drinking. Alcohol cue reactivity tasks have been developed; however, most were created for use with alcohol use disordered individuals and utilize limited or only partially standardized stimuli. This project systematically created an alcohol cue reactivity task for studies with non-drinkers, using well-characterized stimuli.

Objectives: We comprehensively standardized 60 alcohol and 60 non-alcohol beverage pictures using ratings from young non-drinkers (N=82) on affective and perceptual features.

Results: A statistical matching approach yielded 26 matched alcohol-non-alcohol picture pairs matched on valence, arousal, image complexity, brightness, and hue. The task was piloted and further refined to 22 picture pairs. An 8-minute, 32-second event-related task was created using a random stimulus function for optimized condition timing and systematic presentation of the images.

Conclusions: The long-term objectives of this project are to utilize this task with non-drinking youth to investigate how reactivity to alcohol stimuli may predict alcohol use initiation and escalation, to help identify the role of exposure to alcohol stimuli on the subsequent development of alcohol-related problems.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Sample Shuffled Picture and Matched Picture Pair (Non-Alcohol44 and Beer11).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Portion of Alcohol Cue Reactivity Task reference function generated by AFNI RSFgen. Task is 8 minutes, 32 seconds in duration, with 2-second trials. The x–axis represents the first 101 seconds of the task; the y-axis represents the task conditions (alcohol and non-alcohol active control conditions were collapsed into one category). The horizontal lines of the blue graph represent the condition and its duration during the time course of the task.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. [CSEA-NIMH], CftSoEaA. International affective pictures system: Digitized photographs. Gainesville, FL: The Center for Research in Psychophysiology, University of Florida; 1999.
    1. Anton RF, Oroszi G, O'Malley S, Couper D, Swift R, Pettinati H, et al. An evaluation of mu-opioid receptor (OPRM1) as a predictor of naltrexone response in the treatment of alcohol dependence: results from the Combined Pharmacotherapies and Behavioral Interventions for Alcohol Dependence (COMBINE) study. Archives of General Psychiatry. 2008;65(2):135–144. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bauer D, Cox WM. Alcohol-related words are distracting to both alcohol abusers and non-abusers in the Stroop colour-naming task. Addiction. 1998;93(10):1539–1542. - PubMed
    1. Beck AT. Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation; 1978.
    1. Beck AT, Steer RA, Brown GK. Manual for the Beck Depression Inventory-2. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation; 1996.

Publication types