Alcohol‐related associative strength and drinking behaviours: concurrent and prospective relationships

Abstract

The first part of this research assessed the longitudinal relationships between alcohol-related associative strength and alcohol use measured at two time-points, 6 months apart. Cross-lagged results support the utility of alcohol-related associative strength to predict drinking behaviours prospectively and vice versa. These results remained after competing explanations of previous use, autocorrelations between memory measures, sensation seeking and background variables of age and gender were accounted for. Findings offer further evidence for an implicit cognitions approach to drinking processes. In the second part of our study, cross-sectional analysis investigated potential mediating mechanisms in the relation of associative strength to quantity and frequency dimensions of drinking. Mediational models provide preliminary evidence that implicit memory processes may have differential effects on quantity and frequency dimensions of drinking behaviours. The results point to the possibility that increasing awareness of implicit alcohol-related associations may have utility in interventions for young adults.

Impulsive processes in the self-regulation of health behaviour: theoretical and methodological considerations in response to commentaries

“…This breadth may also be the reason why, in our reading of the literature, there is mounting evidence that implicit measures predict unique variance in health behaviour quite well over prolonged periods of time as well (for meta-analyses in the addiction domain, see Reich, Below, & Goldman, 2010;Rooke, Hine, & Thorsteinsson, 2008). Specifically, one study found unique predictive effects of implicit cognition measures for alcohol use six months after the assessment (Kelly, Masterman, & Marlatt, 2005), and another study found that alcohol-arousal associations assessed in 12-year-old boys who just initiated drinking predicted binge drinking 1 year later (Thush & Wiers, 2007). And in the domain of dieting, a recent study found a theoretically expected interaction between implicit food attitudes and inhibitory control in predicting weight gain over a period of one year (Nederkoorn, Houben, Hofmann, Roefs, & Jansen, 2010).…”

Everybody Is…Drinking! Interpretation Bias in Problematic Drinkers With and Without Mild to Borderline Intellectual Disability

“…That is, treatment interventions could focus on directly changing the interpretation bias by training problematic drinkers to interpret ambiguous alcohol-related cues in a neutral manner (cf. Kelly, Masterman, & Marlatt, 2005). Such treatment procedures have been shown to be promising in the field of anxiety (Amir & Taylor, 2012;Salemink, Van den Hout, & Kindt, 2009), and the feasibility has recently been generalized to the treatment of SUD (Woud et al, 2015b).…”

Application of item response theory to tests of substance-related associative memory.

“…Accumulated evidence has shown that substance- or risky behavior-related implicit associative memory, measured by WAT, has strong predictive power for substance use, including alcohol (Ames & Stacy, 1998, Kelly, Masterman, & Marlatt, 2005, Stacy, 1997), marijuana (Ames et al, 2007, Ames & Stacy, 1998, Stacy, 1997) and cigarette use (Grenard et al, 2008, Kelly, Haynes, & Marlatt, 2008), as well as risky sexual behavior (Ames, Grenard, & Stacy, 2013, Grenard, Ames, & Stacy, 2013, Stacy, Ames, Ullman, Zogg, & Leigh, 2006). Given the successful application of WAT to a wide range of issues in health and cognition, it is important to fully understand the psychometric characteristics and construct validity of the measure.…”