The Effect of Video Game Use on Attentional Bias of Gaming Related Imagery

Abstract

Attentional bias toward addictive cues has been documented for various addictive disorders including alcohol (Ceballos et al., 2009; Field et al., 2004c) and nicotine (Field et al., 2004a). Repeated use causes stimuli related to substances and behaviors to become more salient, which was predicted by incentive sensitization (Robinson & Berridge, 1993). The purpose of the current study was to investigate attention toward video gaming related imagery as compared to neutral cues, as well as explore urges and expectancies associated with gaming. Previous studies in our laboratory (Leff et al., 2019) showed that self-reported video gaming behavior was positively related to eye tracking indices. It was hypothesized that these findings would be replicated in the current study. It was also expected that urges and expectancies associated with video games would be positively correlated with gaming symptoms and eye tracking metrics. Participants (N = 26) were presented 2 randomized blocks of image pairs (45 pairs in block 1, 40 in block 2) containing either alcohol, gaming, or neutral images. Following, participants completed demographic and self-reported measures of video gaming behavior. Findings showed that there was a significant positive relationship between gaming symptoms and urges, p < .001, and gaming symptoms and expectancies, p < .01. There was no significant relationship between gaming symptoms and eye tracking indices. There was no relationship between urges and eye tracking indices, or between expectancies and eye tracking indices. These findings support the inclusion of urges and expectancies in future research of problematic gaming.