Effects of Alcohol and White Noise on Recall of Relevant and Irrelevant Task Components

Abstract

This study examined the effects of arousal, induced by alcohol and white noise, on the free recall of intentionally learned words and incidentally learned word-locations, in the presence or absence of word-order cues. The Activation-Deactivation Adjective Check List, a self-report measure of arousal showed that noise affected the tension dimension of arousal, whereas the moderate alcohol dose primarily affected the energy dimension of arousal. That the low dose exerted an arousing effect was evidenced by an increase in tension but only when combined with noise. When word-order was randomized over trials, noise improved word-recall and counteracted the deleterious effect of the moderate alcohol dose. When order remained fixed, however, the moderate dose impaired recall, and at that dose recall was worse under noise. Location-recall was impaired by the moderate dose, and it was superior when word-order remained fixed. It was concluded that recall was influenced by arousal mechanisms and that perceived task demand and consequent effort were possible factors contributing to the obtained effects.

Forget "drinking to forget": Enhanced consolidation of emotionally charged memory by alcohol.

“…Other substances with more direct actions in the brain can also moderate, including cholinergic (Brioni, McGaugh, & Izquierdo, 1989) and GABAergic (Castellano & Pavone, 1988; Castellano & Populin, 1990) compounds. The dose of alcohol is also important, with memory facilitation at low doses but impairment at moderate-to-heavy doses (Jubis, 1986, 1990). Participant variables such as intelligence (Maylor, Rabbitt, James, & Kerr, 1990), gender (Haut, Beckwith, Petros, & Russell, 1989), familiarity with the task (Rumbold & White, 1987), and environment (Babbini, Jones, & Alkana, 1991; Colbern, Sharek, & Zimmermann, 1986; Miles, Porter, & Jones, 1986) can also moderate.…”

Readiness to Perform testing: A critical analysis of the concept and current practices.

“…For example, both speed and accuracy of word recognition has been shown to be degraded by alcohol (Maylor and Rabbitt, 1987a;Maylor, Rabbitt, and Kingstone, 1987;Maylor, Rabbit, James, and Kerr, 1990), as well as recognition for pictures (Ryback, Weinert, and Fozard, 1970). Free recall of text and spatial information also seems to be degracded both in speed and accuracy by alcohol consumption (Jubis, 1990;Maylor, Rabbitt, and Kingstone, 1988;Maylor, Rabbit, James, and Kerr, 1990). Jones and Jones (1977) also demonstrated that alcohol appears to disrupt the storage process of early components in the memory set (i. e., primacy effects) as opposed to latter components (i. e., recency effects).…”

“…Similar results of the disrupted memory processes of early components were reported by Hockey, MacLean, and Hamilton (1981). It should also be noted that a number of these investigations found negative alcohol effects on memory processes at BAC's in the range of .02 to .06% (Jubis, 1990;Ryback, Weinert, and Fozard, 1970).…”