Abstract: This research examined selective attention processing bias toward pain-related words within a dot-probe paradigm in an abstinent heroin addict sample treated with methadone. Abstinent heroin addicts suffered frequent pain problems as patients with chronic pain. Based on the findings that chronic pain patients had attention avoidance to specific pain words, we hypothesized that abstinent heroin addicts had more general attention biases to pain cues. In the current study, 17 abstinent heroin addicts treated with methadone and 19 healthy control participants were recruited from a methadone section for outpatients. Firstly, they completed demographical information, fear of pain questionnaire-Chinese version, and depression, anxiety and stress scale. Then participants finished a dot-probe task that featured sensory pain-neutral, affective-neutral, health catastrophe-neutral and neutral-neutral word pairs. These word pairs were all matched in word frequency and character strokes. In the dot-probe task, a fixation cross “＋” was presented for 1200ms, which was then replaced by a blank screen presented for 300ms. Subsequently, a word pair was presented for 1250ms. Participants were told that after each word pair disappeared, a dot “●” would appear in the location of one of the words. Their task was to judge its location as soon and accurately as possible, by pressing A and L keys when the dot appeared on the left and right side of the computer screen respectively. Each probe appeared until a response was made or for a maximum of 5 seconds. Before the formal study, brief training (5 trials) was undertaken to increase familiarity with task procedure; training procedures were the same as the formal study except that different words were used. Primary data analysis indicated that the abstinent heroin addict group and control group were not significantly differed in age, gender, education years in school, fear of pain level, depression, anxiety and stress level. Then three kinds of attention bias indexes, i.e., reaction time for attention bias scores, reaction time for congruent and incongruent conditions, attention disengagement indexes, were calculated for the abstinent heroin addict group and control group respectively. Consisted with our hypothesis, we found that abstinent heroin addicts treated with methadone had attention avoidance to all pain-related words. Specifically, the main data analysis found that (1) attention bias scores to all pain-related words in abstinent heroin addicts were significantly lower than control group and also significantly lower than zero, which indicated that abstinent heroin addicts were more likely to shift attention away from all pain-related words in comparison with healthy controls; (2) for abstinent heroin addicts treated with methadone, reaction times for congruent condition (i.e., the probe position is the same with the pain-related word position.) were significantly higher than reaction times for incongruent condition (i.e., the probe position is opposite to the pain cues position.), which showed that abstinent heroin addicts treated with methadone had attention avoidance to all pain-related words. Furthermore, abstinent heroin addicts treated with methadone showed more attention avoidance to health catastrophe words than to sensory pain words while the control group showed more attention avoidance to sensory pain words than to health catastrophe words; (3) attention disengagement indexes to sensory and affective pain words in abstinent heroin addicts treated with methadone were marginal significantly lower than control group but not significantly lower than zero, which illustrated that abstinent heroin addicts had the tendency to show attention disengagement facilitation to sensory and affective pain words. In sum, this research found that abstinent heroin addicts treated with methadone had attention avoidance to all pain cues (sensory pain, affective pain and health catastrophe words), especially to health catastrophe words, and also leaned to show attention disengagement facilitation to sensory and affective pain words.

Key words: heroin, pain cues, attention avoidance, attention disengagement

摘要： 研究采用点探测范式，以疼痛线索（感觉疼痛词、情感疼痛词和健康灾难词）和中性线索（中性词）为实验材料，考察接受美沙酮维持治疗的海洛因戒治者对疼痛线索的视觉选择性注意偏向。结果表明：海洛因戒治者对疼痛线索的注意偏向具有普遍性，即对感觉疼痛词、情感疼痛词和健康灾难词等三类疼痛线索均存在注意回避偏向，尤其对健康灾难词的注意回避程度最高；海洛因戒治者还对感觉疼痛词和情感疼痛词存在注意脱离易化倾向。本研究对于有针对性的开展注意偏向矫正以干预疼痛，从而辅助美沙酮的治疗效果、维持患者的戒断状态、降低其复吸风险具有重要意义。

关键词: 海洛因, 疼痛线索, 注意回避, 注意脱离