Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine impulsivity and alcohol approach tendencies in individuals with a predisposition to smartphone addiction using delay discounting and approach-avoidance tasks. A sample of 200 college students from K University was assessed with the Smartphone Addiction Scale (SAS-A), from which 30 individuals were identified as high-risk and potentially at-risk based on thresholds from previous studies, while 29 served as controls. Subjects were presented with delay discounting and approach-avoidance tasks to assess their impulsivity and tendencies towards alcohol-related stimuli. Findings of this study are as follows. Firstly, the delay discounting task revealed that college students prone to smartphone addiction had higher delay discounting rates than those in the control group. Secondly, individuals in the smartphone addiction group displayed higher scores of the Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT) for alcohol-related stimuli than those in the control group. In this study, it was established that individuals prone to smartphone addiction exhibited heightened impulsivity and stronger alcohol approach tendencies than their counterparts who had no such tendencies. These results are significant as they demonstrate the use of behavioral tasks, distinct from self-report surveys, to validate impulsive traits and potential concurrent risk of alcohol addiction among college students with tendencies toward smartphone addiction