Reward-related attentional capture is associated with severity of addictive and obsessive-compulsive behaviors

Abstract

A cue that signals reward can capture attention and elicit approach behaviors in people and animals. The current study examined whether attentional capture by reward-related cues is associated with severity of addiction-related and obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Participants were recruited via Mechanical Turk and included 143 adults (M_age = 34 years, SD = 8.5; 43% female) who had endorsed at least 1 addiction-related or obsessive-compulsive behavior in the past month. All assessment components were delivered via the Internet and included questionnaires to assess severity of compulsivity-related problems across addiction-related and obsessive-compulsive behaviors, as well as a visual search task to measure reward-related attentional capture. Reward-related attentional capture was associated with severity of compulsivity, transdiagnostically. These findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms that underlie compulsive behaviors and suggest that reward-related attentional capture is a promising transdiagnostic cognitive risk marker for compulsivity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Figure 1

Sequence of trial events in the visual search task. Participants responded to the orientation of the line segment (horizontal or vertical) within the diamond (target). One of the nontarget circles could be a color singleton distractor. Fast, correct responses to the target received monetary reward, depending on the distractor color. A distractor rendered in a high-reward color signaled that this was a bonus trial on which a large reward could be won. If instead the search display contained a distractor rendered in a low-reward color (or did not contain a color singleton distractor), then the trial was a standard trial on which only a small reward was available. Slower response times (RTs) on trials with a high-reward distractor than trials with a low-reward distractor demonstrate value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC).

Figure 2

A: A scatterplot of value-modulated attentional capture (VMAC) score (response time [RT] for high minus RT for low) as a function of Brief Assessment Tool for Compulsivity Associated Problems (BATCAP) Primary Addiction score. B: A scatterplot of VMAC score (RT for high minus RT for low) as a function of BATCAP Primary obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) score.