Visual Cues Do Not Control Addicts Decision to Consume

For years, researchers have been trying to understand the connections between addiction and causes. Now, researchers from the Universities of Sussex, Cambridge, and Nottingham have found that visual cues may not control the decision to consume unhealthy items.

The findings determined that while attention to visual cues do relate to addictions, they do not control the decision. Instead, visual cues only offer information about the availability of the bad habit.

Professor Theodora Duka from the University of Sussex, who led the research, said in the Science Daily report: “We have shown that individuals only need to look at a cue representing the substance they are addicted to for a fleeting moment to want to act on it. This suggests that their actions are instead determined by conscious, rapid decision processes following the detection of a Pavlovian-type visual stimulus. For example, instead of the sight of a pub triggering the addictive behavior in an alcoholic, our research shows that the momentary sight of a pub leads the brain to make rapid, conscious decisions about going in for a drink, which is what the alcoholic values.”

Previous studies have suggested that conditional stimuli were capable of producing the same responses that are produced by the reward themselves. Evidence has been produced that shows that drug addicts who show a greater attentional bias for drug-related cues are more likely to relapse following treatment. In such studies, it has been suggested that abolishing attentional bias would be the right treatment.

Dr. Lee Hogarth of the University of Nottingham argues that this is not the case. Think about entering a restaurant and scanning the menu. You don’t select a particular dish just because it is available. Instead, you select it because of the mental picture and the value you place on the meal. The same is true for those with addictions.