Eye movements as implicit measures of attention in addiction

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The ability to pay attention to relevant information in our environment while ignoring irrelevant information is essential for our survival. Unfortunately, in some situations, the same selective attentional process can have negative effects on our lives. An example of this negative impact is observed in addictive behaviours. For instance, the fact that an alcoholic favours to pay attention to alcohol-related cues in the environment rather than to other vital information contributes to maintain his problematic behaviours. To study this effect, researchers typically use implicit measures for which outcomes are not controlled by the individual to avoid his or her subjective influence at that outcome. The most commonly used implicit measures also have an important inconvenience: they require the individual to perform an artificial task (i.e. a "spot-the-difference" activity). Since humans do not usually perform tasks while they are processing information in their day-to-day life, the results from these artificial tasks might not represent our natural attentional processes. A way to address this problem is to use an implicit measure more similar to natural exploration. This can be done by using equipment that measures an individual's eye movements. In this research proposal, with an eye movement monitoring device, scenes will be presented on a computer screen and participants will freely observe the presented images. Comparably to a natural situation, it will allow us to better understand what, where, when, and how long an individual pays attention to different parts of a complex scene. For example, how much time does a heavy drinker spend on bottles of alcohol when he is presented a bar scene. Another example of a measure of interest is how quickly he would disengage his attention from the bottle. These measures will be compared for participants with addictive problems and participants who are not affected by these problems as well as between different types of addiction (i.e., to cigarettes, alcohol, and gambling). The main goal of this research program is to help better understand attentional mechanisms oberved in a naturalistic situation in order to assure that current models of attention in addiction provide the most accurate description of the problem.