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

Albertella, Lucy, Le Pelley, Mike E., Chamberlain, Samuel R., Westbrook, Fred, Fontenelle, Leonardo F., Segrave, Rebecca, Lee, Rico, Pearson, Daniel and Yücel, Murat (2019) Reward-related attentional capture is associated with severity of addictive and obsessive-compulsive behaviors. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 33 (5), 495-502. (doi:10.1037/adb0000484).

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 addictionrelated 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.

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Contributors

Author: Samuel R. Chamberlain

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