Heavy cannabis use and attentional avoidance of anxiety-related stimuli

• An anxiety-related visual dot-probe task with gaze tracking was used.
• The task was able to measure different types of attentional bias.
• Heavy cannabis use was associated with attentional avoidance of anxiety-related stimuli.

ObjectivesCannabis is now the most widely used illicit substance in the world. Previous research demonstrates that cannabis use is associated with dysfunctional affect regulation and anxiety. Anxiety is characterised by attentional biases in the presence of emotional information. This novel study therefore examined the attentional bias of cannabis users when presented with anxiety-related stimuli. The aim was to establish whether cannabis users respond to anxiety-related stimuli differently to control participants.MethodsA dot-probe paradigm was utilised using undergraduate students. Trials contained anxiety-related stimuli and neutral control stimuli. Eye-tracking was used to measure attention for the stimuli.ResultsResults indicated that cannabis users demonstrated attentional-avoidance behaviour when presented with anxiety-related stimuli.ConclusionsThe findings suggest a difference in processing of emotional information in relation to neutral information between groups. It would appear that cannabis users avoid anxiety provoking stimuli. Such behaviour could potentially have motivational properties that could lead to exacerbating anxiety disorder-type behaviour.