Alcohol Intoxication and Metamemory: Little Evidence that Moderate Intoxication Impairs Metacognitive Monitoring Processes

Abstract

There is minimal research on metacognition in alcohol-intoxicated participants. Study 1 examined metacognition across sober, intoxicated, and placebo groups, with the intoxicated group's breath alcohol concentration reaching 0.074 g/ 210 L on average immediately prior to the metacognition task. Participants answered cued recall general knowledge questions and provided confidence ratings and feeling-of-knowing judgments. They then completed a recognition (i.e., multiple choice) version of the same task, indicating an answer and a confidence rating for each question. Findings suggest that metacognitive accuracy generally did not vary across intoxication levels, although the control group's retrospective confidence judgments better discriminated between accurate and inaccurate responses than the alcohol groups in the recognition task. Study 2 surveyed academic psychologists about their expectations regarding the relation between alcohol and metacognition. Study 1's results were counter to their expectations, as respondents generally predicted a relation would be present. We discuss the implications for alcohol and memory.

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