Craving and cognition: investigating the causal relationship with attentional training

Theories of motivation and drug craving suggest that feelings of desire (for example, cigarette or alcohol craving) can be produced or increased by cognitive processes. For example, in cigarette smokers, smoking-related cues (such as the sight and smell of a lit cigarette) tend to 'grab their attention', and this causes their subjective cigarette craving to increase. Similarly, in heavy drinkers, alcohol craving is thought to be provoked when alcohol-related environmental cues are attended to. In order to test predictions made by these theories, experiments will be conducted with heavy drinkers and tobacco smokers in which we will manipulate the amount of attention that is paid to alcohol- or smoking-related pictures, and subsequently examine the effects on various aspects of cognition and subjective 'craving' for those drugs. The results of these studies will be of interest to those who are interested in how to reduce drive states such as alcohol or cigarette craving, for example those with substance abuse problems, or those involved in the treatment of these disorders. The results may also have implications for our understanding of what contributes to the experience of other drive states, such as hunger and thirst