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Alcohol effects on response inhibition: Variability across tasks and individuals
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Alcohol effects on response inhibition: Variability across tasks and individuals

Bruce D Bartholow, Kimberly A Fleming, Phillip K Wood, Nelson Cowan, J Scott Saults, Lee Altamirano, Akira Miyake, Jorge Martins and Kenneth J Sher
Experimental and clinical psychopharmacology, Vol.26(3), pp.251-267
06/2018
DOI: 10.1037/pha0000190
PMCID: PMC5991490
PMID: 29863383
url
https://doi.org/10.1037/pha0000190View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Considerable research has investigated the acute effects of alcohol on response inhibition, but a number of issues remain unresolved. Given that most studies use only a single laboratory task to assess inhibition, it is often difficult to determine whether alcohol's effects are task specific or generalize across measures of the same construct. Moreover, relatively few studies have directly compared effects of alcohol under ascending and descending blood alcohol concentrations (BACs), and those that have often failed to disentangle BAC limb effects from the effects of repeated testing. This study was intended to provide a test of alcohol's effects on behavioral inhibition using multiple laboratory measures in a relatively large sample and comparing effects under ascending and descending BAC. Young adults (N = 216) completed three commonly used inhibition tasks (Stroop, antisaccade, and stop-signal) at baseline and again 1-3 weeks later under one of three beverage conditions (alcohol, placebo or control) and one of two BAC limb conditions (ascending/descending or descending only). Findings indicated considerable specificity in alcohol's effects. Relative to control and placebo conditions, antisaccade performance suffered under both ascending and descending BAC and stop-signal reaction time (RT) suffered only under descending BAC. The Stroop RT interference effect was not affected by alcohol, though alcohol did impair response accuracy on incongruent Stroop trials. Baseline performance moderated effects of alcohol on both antisaccade accuracy and Stroop interference, suggesting the importance of individual differences. The current findings suggest that more specificity is required in characterizing acute effects of alcohol on inhibitory control. (PsycINFO Database Record
Adult Alcohol Drinking - adverse effects Alcohol Drinking - blood Alcohol Drinking - psychology Cognition - drug effects Cognition - physiology Ethanol - administration & dosage Female Humans Individuality Inhibition (Psychology) Male Photic Stimulation - methods Psychomotor Performance - drug effects Psychomotor Performance - physiology Random Allocation Reaction Time - drug effects Reaction Time - physiology Young Adult

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