A test of alcohol dose effects on multiple behavioral measures of impulsivity

Abstract

Background-Acute alcohol administration affects impulsive behavior, although these effects vary as a function of alcohol dose, assessment instrument, and time of measurement following administration.Methods-We concurrently examined the dose-dependent effects of alcohol on three distinct types of impulsivity tasks (continuous performance [IMT], stop-signal [GoStop], and delay-discounting [SKIP] tasks). Ninety healthy alcohol drinkers were assigned to one of the three task groups (n = 30 each), each group experienced placebo, 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, and 0.8 g/kg alcohol doses across 5 experimental days, and task performance was assessed at 0.5 h before and 0.25, 1.0, and 2.0 h after alcohol administration. We hypothesized that impulsive responding on all tasks would be increased by acute alcohol administration both across time and during the peak BrAC, but the magnitude would depend on the task being tested. Analyses included the time-course and the peak BrAC effects. Task comparisons of peak behavioral changes following each dose are illustrated using standardized scores.Results-While alcohol consumption increased impulsive responding during all three tasks to some extent, our hypothesis was only partially supported. During the IMT, the 0.6 and 0.8 g/kg doses produced increased impulsive responding across time and at the peak BrAC. However, during the GoStop and SKIP, impulsivity increased across time regardless of the alcohol dose size, with no differences in impulsive responding among dose conditions at peak BrAC.Conclusions-This study demonstrated alcohol-induced changes in impulsivity are not uniformly affected by alcohol. These data, in conjunction with previous studies, further support that impulsivity is not a unitary construct.

Impulsive Personality and Alcohol Use: Bidirectional Relations Over One Year

“…The observed impact of drinking on impulsivity may be reflective of the effect of rash behavior occurring while intoxicated on an individual's subsequent ratings of his or her typical personality. This would be consistent with the findings of previous studies where, when administered alcohol, social drinkers tended to behave impulsively on subsequent laboratory tasks (Dougherty et al, 2000(Dougherty et al, , 2008, and research indicating that heavy drinkers demonstrate an increase in impulsive behavior following a high dose of alcohol that light drinkers do not (Reed et al, 2012). Considering specifically the bidirectional relation of alcohol use and urgency, individuals high in the trait may find that, because of peer acceptance of heavy drinking, consuming alcohol is an acceptable way to act out while experiencing strong affect, and intoxication may in turn contribute to increases in intense emotion and impulsive behavior.…”

Alcohol Doesn’t Always Compromise Cognitive Function: Exploring Moderate Doses in Young Adults

“…Our findings suggest that BrACs consistent with those of a social drinking episode for non-problem drinkers did not compromise psychomotor, set-shifting, or working memory abilities, as measured by three tasks, in this cohort. Null findings for the current study are in accord with previous acute alcohol investigations that assess a variety of cognitive functions (Dougherty et al, 2008;Leitz et al, 2009), including set-shifting (Gilbertson et al, 2009) and working memory (Tzambazis & Stough, 2000). Our results further suggest that low-dose alcohol might aid simple psychomotor ability.…”

Impairment of manual but not saccadic response inhibition following acute alcohol intoxication

“…Our first main result replicates a substantial literature reporting alcohol-induced impairments to manual SSRT (e.g., Caswell et al, 2013;de Wit et al, 2000;Dougherty et al, 2008;Fillmore and VogelSprott, 1999;Gan et al, 2014;Loeber and Duka, 2009;McCarthy et al, 2012;Nikolaou et al, 2013;Ramaekers and Kuypers, 2006;Reynolds et al, 2006). However, the effect size and Bayes factors were smaller than anticipated.…”

“…Most reports of alcohol disrupting inhibitory control in healthy volunteers have employed the go/no-go task (Mulvihill et al, 1997;Weafer and Fillmore, 2008), cued go/no-go task (Marczinski and Fillmore, 2003;Weafer and Fillmore, 2012) and the stop signal reaction time task (Caswell et al, 2013;de Wit et al, 2000;Dougherty et al, 2008;Fillmore and Vogel-Sprott, 1999;Gan et al, 2014;Loeber and Duka, 2009;McCarthy et al, 2012;Nikolaou et al, 2013;Ramaekers and Kuypers, 2006;Reynolds et al, 2006). Although there exist reports where alcohol had no significant effect Duka, 2008, 2007), taken together, these studies suggest that even a relatively small dose of alcohol (e.g., 0.45 g/kg) normally increases the number of commission errors in the go/no-go task or slows the manual stop signal reaction time (SSRT) in the stop signal task.…”