Eye Tracking Studies Exploring Cognitive and Affective Processes among Alcohol Drinkers: a Systematic Review and Perspectives

Acute alcohol intoxication and alcohol use disorders are characterized by a wide range of psychological and cerebral impairments, which have been widely explored using neuropsychological and neuroscientific techniques. Eye tracking has recently emerged as an innovative tool to renew this exploration...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Neuropsychology review 2021-03, Vol.31 (1), p.167-201
Main Authors: Maurage, Pierre, Bollen, Zoé, Masson, Nicolas, D’Hondt, Fabien
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohol use
Attention
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Cognitive ability
Cognitive science
Drunkenness
Executive function
Eye
Eye movements
Information processing
Intoxication
Literature reviews
Neurology
Neuropsychology
Neuroscience
Neurosciences
Review
Saccadic eye movements
Systematic review
Visual perception
Visual stimuli
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Summary:Acute alcohol intoxication and alcohol use disorders are characterized by a wide range of psychological and cerebral impairments, which have been widely explored using neuropsychological and neuroscientific techniques. Eye tracking has recently emerged as an innovative tool to renew this exploration, as eye movements offer complementary information on the processes underlying perceptive, attentional, memory or executive abilities. Building on this, the present systematic and critical literature review provides a comprehensive overview of eye tracking studies exploring cognitive and affective processes among alcohol drinkers. Using PRISMA guidelines, 36 papers that measured eye movements among alcohol drinkers were extracted from three databases (PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus). They were assessed for methodological quality using a standardized procedure, and categorized based on the main cognitive function measured, namely perceptive abilities, attentional bias, executive function, emotion and prevention/intervention. Eye tracking indexes showed that alcohol-related disorders are related to: (1) a stable pattern of basic eye movement impairments, particularly during alcohol intoxication; (2) a robust attentional bias, indexed by increased dwell times for alcohol-related stimuli; (3) a reduced inhibitory control on saccadic movements; (4) an increased pupillary reactivity to visual stimuli, regardless of their emotional content; (5) a limited visual attention to prevention messages. Perspectives for future research are proposed, notably encouraging the exploration of eye movements in severe alcohol use disorders and the establishment of methodological gold standards for eye tracking measures in this field.
ISSN:1040-7308
1573-6660
DOI:10.1007/s11065-020-09458-0