Abstract
BACKGROUND: The physiological and cognitive reactions provoked by alcohol cues, as compared to non-alcohol cues, can predict future drinking. Alcohol cue reactivity tasks have been developed; however, most were created for use with alcohol use disordered individuals and utilize limited or only partially standardized stimuli. This project systematically created an alcohol cue reactivity task for studies with non-drinkers, using well-characterized stimuli. OBJECTIVES: We comprehensively standardized 60 alcohol and 60 non-alcohol beverage pictures using ratings from young non-drinkers (N=82) on affective and perceptual features. RESULTS: A statistical matching approach yielded 26 matched alcohol-non-alcohol picture pairs matched on valence, arousal, image complexity, brightness, and hue. The task was piloted and further refined to 22 picture pairs. An 8-minute, 32-second event-related task was created using a random stimulus function for optimized condition timing and systematic presentation of the images. CONCLUSIONS: The long-term objectives of this project are to utilize this task with non-drinking youth to investigate how reactivity to alcohol stimuli may predict alcohol use initiation and escalation, to help identify the role of exposure to alcohol stimuli on the subsequent development of alcohol-related problems.