Retraining automatic approach tendencies in alcohol dependent patients

Aims: The study was designed to assess the short-term and long-term effects of a retraining of automatic approach tendencies in alcohol dependent patients. Furthermore, the specificity of the training effects was tested. Design: Experimental study. Participants: 225 alcohol-dependent patients in an inpatient treatment setting. The patients were assigned to four different training groups. Measurements: We used three different versions of the adapted Approach Avoidance Task (AAT; Rinck & Becker, 2007) to train automatic alcohol and soda action tendencies in alcohol dependent patients. The training consisted of fou…