Investigating biases of attention and memory for alcohol-related and negative words in alcohol-dependents with and without major depression after day-clinic treatment

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate attentional and memory biases in alcohol-dependents with and without major depression compared to healthy controls. We assumed that both groups of alcohol-dependents would show attentional and memory biases for alcohol-related words. For the alcohol-dependents with depression, we additionally expected both types of biases for negative words. Alcohol-dependents without co-morbidity (Alc) and alcohol-dependents with major depression (D-Alc) as well as control participants with a moderate consumption of alcohol (Con) completed an alcohol Stroop task and a directed forgetting paradigm using word stimuli from three categories: neutral, negative, and alcohol-related. Stroop effects showed that not only alcohol-dependents but also control participants were more distracted by alcohol-related than by negative words. In the directed forgetting procedure, all participants showed a significant effect for each word-category, including alcohol-related and negative words. The D-Alc-group memorized more alcohol-related than negative to-be-remembered words. The results do not corroborate the hypothesis of more pronounced attentional and memory biases in alcohol-dependents. However, in alcohol-dependents with depression a memory bias for alcohol-related material was found, suggesting that this group may be more pre-occupied with alcohol than patients without such co-morbidity.

Keywords: Alcohol Stroop; Alcoholism; Directed forgetting; Major depression.