Addiction research shows that when a person abuses a substance they display an attentional bias (AB) for information in their environment relating to this substance. That is, they direct their attention towards such information and process it more extensively. AB is important since research suggests it contributes to the maintenance and/or escalation of the addictive behaviour. This project will develop measures of food-related AB designed to distinguish between different attentional processes (e.g., initial attention toward the information versus sustained attention). It will also assess the sensitivity of these measures to a range of predictors (e.g., hunger, dieting, sensitivity to reward).

Keywords