Efficacy of Computerized Attentional Bias Modification of e-cigarette use behaviors among youth

In 2018, 3.2% (8.1 million) U.S. adults reported current e-cigarette use, and in 2020, 19.6% of high school students (3.02 million) and 4.7% of middle school students (550,000) reported current e-cigarette use. E-cigarette use among this demographic is increasingly becoming a pervasive public health concern lending itself to emergent health maladies (e.g., chemical pneumonitis). This study actualizes attentional bias, or an elevated attention to stimuli with enhanced saliency/relevance for individuals. Previous psychopathologies have shown effectiveness in the attentional retraining of participants battling other maladaptive behaviors, specifically modalities of addiction (e.g., alcohol). Predicated on prior concept analyses, we aim to investigate the feasibility and effectiveness of a novel computerized attentional bias modification (CABM) program to promote disengagement from potent e-cigarette cues bombarding this demographic. Participants will engage in a five-part, two-arm online program consisting of pre-training, post-training, and one-month follow up assessments in tandem with randomized division of participants into either CABM or placebo training over a four-week period. Assessments are designed to temporally quantify instances of attentional bias – or fluctuations in decision-making ability given the presence of salient stimuli – and relate them to concurrent training sessions. Self-reported data gathered from the post-training and one-month follow-up assessments will be analyzed in relation to the pre-training assessment in order to gauge the effectiveness in attentional bias modification of participants using the CABM program compared to the control group. Given any statistically significant improvements, we aim to publish a computerized attentional training protocol capable of modifying the attentional allocation of active e-cigarette users away from potent environmental cues, allowing users the capacity to disengage from deleterious behaviors and live a healthier life. Aside from this resource’s applicability to an emergent psychopathology, we believe in its precedential ability in the similarly emergent field of attentional bias modification as an addiction treatment protocol