ArticlePsychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors2018
Failed attempts to improve the reliability of the alcohol visual probe task following empirical recommendations.
Article in Psychology of addictive behaviors : journal of the Society of Psychologists in Addictive Behaviors, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 55 citations in OpenAlex.
- Does Attentional Bias Predict Relapse in Addiction? A Systematic Review of Longitudinal Studies.Brain and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- A preliminary investigation of the acute effects of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol on pain and opioid attentional bias among persons with opioid use disorder.Journal of psychiatric research · 2024Trial
- The acute effects of cannabis, with and without cannabidiol, on attentional bias to cannabis related cues: a randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, cross-over study.Psychopharmacology · 2024Trial
- Integrating cognitive bias modification for pain and opioid cues into medication for opioid use disorder clinical care: Feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary results.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2023Trial
- Attentional Bias During a Novel Alcohol Cue Virtual Reality Paradigm.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2026Article
- Orienting bias towards electronic nicotine delivery system (ENDS) cues.Addictive behaviors reports · 2026Article
- Attentional bias for alcohol-related cues in a clinical setting among patients with alcohol use disorder: Evidence from eye movements and reaction times.Drug and alcohol dependence reports · 2026Article
- Impact of Visual Masking on Attentional Bias in Cross-Sectional Clinical and Healthy Populations: Differences in Conscious and Unconscious Processing of Alcohol-Related Cues.Alcohol, clinical & experimental research · 2026Article
- Cognitive Bias Modification for Individuals With Opioid Use Disorder and Chronic Pain Did Not Predict Changes in Clinical Outcomes.Journal of studies on alcohol and drugs · 2026Article
- Effects of acute psychosocial stress on cue-reactivity, attentional bias and implicit associations in women with problematic social network use: An experimental study.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Reaction-time task reliability is more accurately computed with permutation-based split-half correlations than with Cronbach's alpha.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2025Review
- Disparities in Patient Portal Engagement Among Patients With Hypertension Treated in Primary Care.JAMA network open · 2024Article
- Exploring the multiverse of analysis options for the alcohol Stroop.Behavior research methods · 2024Article
- Biased processing of game-related information in problematic mobile gaming users.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2023Article
- Trial-level bias score versus mean bias score: Comparison of the reliability and external validity using dot-probe task among daily smokers.Addictive behaviors · 2022Article
- An Eye-Tracking Study of Attention Biases in Children at High Familial Risk for Depression and Their Parents with Depression.Child psychiatry and human development · 2022Article
- When Alcohol Adverts Catch the Eye: A Psychometrically Reliable Dual-Probe Measure of Attentional Bias.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Improving Treatment Outcome in Children With Obesity by an Online Self-Control Training: A Randomized Controlled Trial.Frontiers in pediatrics · 2021Article
- A Pictorial Dot Probe Task to Assess Food-Related Attentional Bias in Youth With and Without Obesity: Overview of Indices and Evaluation of Their Reliability.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- The role of affect, emotion management, and attentional bias in young adult drinking: An experience sampling study.Psychopharmacology · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
The visual probe task (VPT) is a computerized task used to measure attentional bias to substance-related stimuli. Little research has examined the psychometric properties of the VPT, despite concerns it demonstrates poor test-retest reliability and internal consistency. These issues can reduce confidence in inferences based on VPT performance. As such, we attempted to identify parameters under which the reliability of the alcohol VPT might be improved by applying recent empirical recommendations for outlier handling, bias calculation, and task design from the anxiety literature. We reanalyzed data from 3 previously published studies in our laboratory and 2 newly collected data sets. We compared tasks which presented images on the left/right of the screen to above/below, whether participants responded to the location or content of the probe, and whether general alcohol-related images or images personalized to the individual were used. In each VPT we also applied a priori outlier removal (2 and 3 standard deviations and median absolute difference) and data-driven outlier removal (winsorizing), in addition to calculating trial-level bias scores. Across all studies and tasks internal consistency and test-retest reliability of attentional bias measures were inadequate. There was no consistent improvement in internal consistency or test-retest reliability as a function of outlier removal methods. We were unable to demonstrate adequate reliability of the alcohol VPT, which further supports observations that these tasks may not yield reliable measures. Future research should focus on improving the reliability of these tasks or abandoning them in favor of more reliable alternatives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.