Attention field as a cognitive-behavioral marker for demarcating internet- but not smoking-addiction from reward

Abstract

Attentional effect (AE), attention profile (AP), and attention field (AF) have been studied extensively, however, their roles in addiction and demarcating addiction from rewards remain unclear. Using a modified Posner-paradigm with two types of pre-rewarded-cues (addiction-related and addiction-unrelated) and four groups (smoking-dependents, internet-dependents, and respective HCs), we found that both AEs and APs were independent of either cue type or group, while AFs were interactively modulated by the two. AFs of addiction-related cues were narrower than those of addiction-unrelated cues for internet-dependents, but not for either smoking-dependents or HCs; AFs of internet-dependents (not smoking-dependents) were narrower than those of HCs for addiction-related cues, but not for addiction-unrelated cues. Significantly, internet-dependents reduced AFs can be simulated by the divisive-normalization computation, both of which closely tracked their addictive severities. Our findings identify a cognitive-behavioral marker for demarcating internet-addiction from rewarding, arguing against the notion that internet-addiction, or, more generally, non-substance-addiction, is ill-posed.