Cocaine-specific speed-accuracy trade-off during anti-saccade testing differentiates patients with cocaine use disorder who achieve initial abstinence during treatment.

Abstract

Background: The response time speed-accuracy trade-off (SATO) is an established index of information processing ability, but rarely examined as a variable in association with treatment of substance use disorder (SUD).

Aim: The purpose of this study was to test baseline information-processing ability differences between individuals who respond to treatment for cocaine use disorder v. those who do not.

Methods: Eighty patients enrolled in a clinical trial for cocaine use disorder completed a baseline drug-specific eye-tracking (anti-saccade) assessment prior to treatment, which included trials with both cocaine-related and neutral stimuli. SATO functions were computed for treatment responders v. non-responders.

Results: Unexpectedly, responders demonstrated statistically different SATO functions, showing poorer accuracy when executing faster response times. This difference was present on trials that presented cocaine stimuli only.

Conclusions: SATO during performance of an eye-movement task may be useful for predicting differential response to substance use disorder treatment. However, in the present study, results were specific to cocaine cues rather than an overall SATO performance decrement.