Alcohol abusers' and nonabusers' distraction by alcohol and concern-related stimuli.

Alcohol abusers' and nonabusers' attentional distraction for neutral, alcohol-related, and concern-related (personally relevant) words was assessed with a word-word color-naming task. Abusers, unlike nonabusers, showed greater attentional distraction for alcohol-related than concern-related words. Exploratory analyses indicated that abusers who were more distracted by alcohol-related than concern-related stimuli (i.e., "alcohol distracted") responded more slowly to neutral words than "concern-distracted" participants. The results suggest that the relative degree of distraction by alcohol versus other personally relevant stimuli holds promise for understanding the cognitive and motivational processes underlying alcohol abuse.