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Category: Project

Description: Deficits in inhibitory control seem to promote habitual behavior and therefore play an important role in the development and maintenance of substance use disorders and behavioral addictions. However, although several training approaches have been suggested to improve inhibitory control, there is at present a considerable lack of knowledge about the best way to improve behavioral deficits. Against this background, an individualized, adaptive inhibitory control training was developed based on a systematic literature search of shortcomings of existing trainings. The present study set out to assess feasibility and acceptance of this training and to provide preliminary results on its efficacy regarding binge drinking. In the training, participants are instructed to react to go stimuli and inhibit their reaction to no-go stimuli, depending on the content of the stimuli. Each of the three training sessions included two categories: shapes (no-go circles, go rectangles) and pictures (no-go alcoholic drinks, go gardening tools). The difficulty of each session (No-Go rate and presentation time) was variable (No-Go range: 5-35%, presentation time range: 350-1000ms) depending on the performance in the previous session. The stimuli were individualized, as participants chose their preferred drink category (e.g., white wine, dark beer etc.). Furthermore, participants rated 30 gardening tools for their association with alcohol consumption, whereby the 20 gardening tools with the lowest rating were used. After each block, a feedback screen with the percentage of correct responses (execution or withholding) occurred. To aim for more generalization, within each category (circles, rectangles, alcoholic drinks, gardening tools), a different picture set was used for every training session.