The Effects of Virtual Covert Sensitization on Alcohol Craving of Social Drinkers

초록

Covert sensitization (CS) is imagery based aversive treatment aiming to eliminate cravings and to induce aversion to abused drugs. Although an advantage of CS is that its effectiveness relies mainly on an individual’s ability of imagination, this can also be a limitation. In the present study, we will use virtual reality (VR) to enhance the effects CS. The alcohol-Stroop task and an eye movement task will be administered to measure the efficacy of the treatment, in addition to self-reports of cravings. We will also discuss explicit measures of cravings and alcohol related attentional bias using eye-tracking and the alcohol-Stroop task.