Addictive Behaviors, Vol. 25, No. 1, pp. 99–102, 2000 Copyright © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in the USA. All rights reserved 0306-4603/00/$–see front matter PII S0306-4603(98)00112-9 99 Pergamon BRIEF REPORT INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES IN CRAVING AND OBSESSIVE COCAINE THOUGHTS ON ATTENTIONAL PROCESSES IN COCAINE ABUSE PATIENTS INGMAR H. A. FRANKEN, LINDA Y. KROON, and VINCENT M. HENDRIKS Parnassia Research Centre Abstract — In the present pilot-study, the relation between craving, obsessive thoughts about cocaine, experienced control, and attentional bias for cocaine related words is investi- gated. Sixteen cocaine abuse patients participated in a reaction time (RT) experiment which was employed to measure the ability of subjects to shift their attention away from cocaine re- lated words. Postexperiment craving was found to be positively correlated with reaction times on drug related cues, in contrast to RT on neutral cues. Furthermore, obsessive thoughts about cocaine use and the experienced cocaine use control, in the week before the experi- ment, were correlated in a higher degree with RTs on drug cues than postexperiment craving. Attentional bias for drug cues was evidenced in patients with higher scores on obsessive co- caine thoughts and higher craving scores. This study shows that individual differences on in- formation processing, within a cocaine abuse patient population, are present. © 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd Attentional bias is believed to play an important role in the maintenance of psychiat- ric disorders (Wells & Matthews, 1994). In the field of substance abuse, attentional bias may contribute to the maintenance of drug use and relapse (Johnsen, Laberg, Cox, Vaksdal, & Hugdahl, 1994; Sayette & Hufford, 1994). Although preoccupation with drug-related stimuli is one of the key features of addiction, experimental studies on this topic are scarce. Several studies on abstinent alcoholics provide evidence for the presence of an attentional bias in abstinent alcoholics on alcohol-related stimuli (Johnsen et al., 1994; Stetter, Ackerman, Bizer, Straube, & Mann, 1995). In addition, the observation that substance abusers have difficulties in disengaging from addiction- related stimuli is found for other addictive behaviors such as nicotine addiction (Johnsen, Thayer, Laberg, & Asbjornsen, 1997), bulimia nervosa (Overduin, Jansen, & Louwerse, 1995), and cocaine addiction (Rosse et al., 1997). Experimental studies in smoking populations (Juliano & Brandon, 1998; Sayette & Hufford, 1994) found that, in the presence of smoking cues, smokers have difficulties focusing their attention on alternative (neutral) cues. Initial difficulties in avoiding ad- diction-related information, that is making attentional shifts away from this material, may promote relapse in abstinent smokers. Prolonged RTs on attentional tasks in the presence of drug cues, and attentional bias on drug cues may reflect the presence of drug craving (Overduin et al., 1995; Say- ette & Hufford, 1994). However, in a recent study by Juliano and Brandon (1998), the authors found that RTs are affected by exposure to drug cues, yet RT variance could not be explained by craving alone. Requests for reprints should be sent to Ingmar H. A. Franken, Parnassia Research Centre–Addiction Department, P. O. Box 53002, 2505 AA The Hague, The Netherlands; E–mail: ifranken@parnassia.nl