Dissociation of drug and negative emotional cue induced attentional bias in individuals with methamphetamine‐use disorder

Abstract Background and Objectives Although both drugs and negative emotions can trigger drug craving or relapse in individuals with methamphetamine‐use disorder (MUD), it remains unclear whether individuals with MUD have attentional biases toward both drug and negative emotional cues and whether this bias involves attention orientation or difficulty in attention disengagement. This study aimed to measure different components of attentional bias toward drug‐related and negative emotional cues in individuals with MUD. Methods Two dot‐probe tasks were used to investigate attentional bias toward drug (drug task) and negative emotional cues (emotion task) in individuals with MUD. Forty‐three males with MUD (average age of 43.44 ± 11.91 years, average drug‐use duration of 11.35 ± 8.39 years) participated in the study voluntarily. Results There was a significant interaction between the task type and location ( p = .01). Specifically, for drug cues, participants showed significant difficulty in attention disengagement toward drug cues ( p = .01); however, no attention orientation ( p = .46). For negative emotional cues, neither significant attention orientation ( p = .07) nor significant difficulty in attention disengagement ( p = .50) was found. Conclusions and Scientific Significance Attentional bias in individuals with MUD was highly selective for drug cues; thus, difficulty in attention disengagement from drug cues can be considered a potential mediating mechanism for attentional bias modification interventions for individuals with MUD. This study served to generate hypotheses or suggest future experiments on interventions for individuals with MUD.