Temporal precedence of self-regulation over depression and alcohol problems: Support for a model of self-regulatory failure.

Abstract

Background: Alcohol-induced blackouts, a form of anterograde amnesia that restricts the encoding of short-term memories into long-term ones, are among the most severe alcohol-related consequences. College students are at high risk of experiencing alcohol-induced blackouts, and there is a need to determine whether alcohol interventions can effectively reduce blackouts in this population. The current study uses data from 3 randomized clinical trials to examine the effect of various intervention approaches on alcohol-induced blackouts.Methods: Four interventions were compared over 3 studies: (i) a computerized feedback intervention (electronic Check-Up To Go [e-Chug]; Study 1); (ii) a single-session brief motivational intervention (BMI; Study 1); (iii) a BMI plus behavioral economic session focused on increasing substance-free activities (BMI + Substance-Free Activity Session [SFAS]; Studies 2 and 3); and (iv) a BMI plus supplemental Relaxation Training session (BMI + Relaxation Training; Studies 2 and 3). Studies 1 and 3 also included an assessment-only control condition. For each study, participants reported whether they had experienced an alcohol-induced blackout at each time point; binary logistic regressions examined differential likelihood of experiencing an alcohol-induced blackout over time.Results: Neither the single-session BMI nor e-Chug reduced alcohol-induced blackouts over assessment only; however, participants in the BMI + SFAS or BMI + Relaxation Training condition were significantly less likely to experience an alcohol-induced blackout compared to assessment only at 1month (Wald = 4.77, odds ratio [OR] = 0.53, p = 0.03) and 6-month follow-ups (Wald = 5.72, OR = 0.52, p = 0.02). Study 2 also revealed a larger effect for the BMI + SFAS over the BMI + Relaxation Training condition at 6 months (Wald = 4.11 OR = 0.22, p = 0.043), although this was not replicated in Study 3. The effects for the 2-session BMIs lasted 6 months, at which point maturation effects diminished differences between assessment-only and intervention conditions.Conclusions: Two sessions of BMI are a substantial enough dose to result in reductions in alcoholinduced blackouts among college student heavy drinkers.

Longitudinal Associations Between Perceptions of Peer Group Drinking Norms and Students' Alcohol Use Frequency Within College Sport Teams

“…The effects we estimated are more conservative than those reported in comparable previous studies, which may also indicate that artifacts pertaining to analyses and measurement might enter‐in to longitudinal studies through inflated estimates of cross‐lagged effects. Although traditional cross‐lagged models remain a popular strategy among alcohol use researchers (Acuff et al, ), the findings of this study demonstrate that unique effects may often exist at both between‐person and within‐person levels (prospective and contemporaneous). This specifically highlights the value in moving toward a random intercept approach when fitting cross‐lagged models to produce estimates of social influence that factor‐out many alternative reasons for lagged associations (Berry and Willoughby, ; Hamaker et al, ).…”

Limitations of cross-lagged panel models in addiction research and alternative models: An empirical example using project MATCH.

“…In other words, is a person who reports a high level of readiness to change at earlier time points expected to exhibit a great deal of behavior change at Time T + 1, after accounting for their prior levels of behavior change? Similarly, Acuff et al (2019) used CLPM to determine if self-regulation prospectively predicted subsequent substance involvement, if substance involvement predicted subsequent self-regulation, or both. Other researchers used the phrasing of testing reciprocal or bidirectional relations among constructs relevant to substance involvement when utilizing CLPMs (e.g., Boyd et al, 2018; Elkins et al, 2014).…”