The interaction of approach-alcohol action tendencies, working memory capacity, and current task goals predicts the inability to regulate drinking behavior.

Abstract

The inability to regulate alcohol consumption has been attributed to an imbalance between stimulus-driven behavioral biases, or action tendencies, and the ability to exert goal-directed control, or working memory capacity (WMC). Previous research assessing the interaction between these variables has not considered the effect of whether individuals' current goals or task demands require goal-directed control. Our aim was to examine the potential interaction of appetitive action tendencies and the ability to exert control over these action tendencies as a function of whether task demands require applying control for successful task completion. Two groups of social drinkers (n = 40 per group) who differed in their ability to regulate their alcohol consumption completed a novel variant of the Approach-Avoidance Task (AAT), which separately assessed approach and avoid trials. The approach and avoidance responses differentially require goal-directed control, depending on whether the task-relevant response is incongruent with the stimulus-driven action tendency. Results indicated that (a) group differences in AAT indices were only observed on trials that required an avoidance movement, which are trials where the task-relevant response would be incongruent with an approach action tendency, and (b) the extent of the group differences for these avoidance trials was moderated by individual differences in WMC, such that problem drinkers with lower WMC showed greater behavioral bias toward alcohol than those with higher WMC. These findings suggest that difficulties in regulating alcohol consumption arise from a complex interaction of action-tendencies, WMC, and current goals or task demands.

The Prospective Joint Effects of Self-Regulation and Impulsive Processes on Early Adolescence Alcohol Use

“…This is in line with a central tenet of Wiers et al's (2007) model, namely that with limited capacity to self-regulate, impulsive processes influence behavior. This finding aligns with some previous research (Ostafin et al, 2008;Salemink & Wiers, 2014;Sharbanee et al, 2013;van Hemel-Ruiter et al, 2015), which found that impulsive alcohol-related cognitive processes predicted alcohol use when working memory/executive control capacity was low.…”

Alcohol‐related biases in selective attention and action tendency make distinct contributions to dysregulated drinking behaviour

“…This contrasts with alternate methodologies [16,33], and may suggest that the SA/ATT is less susceptible to WM confounds.…”

“…[16,[28][29][30][31] Selective-attention and action-tendency assessment trials. In the selective-attention assessment trials, attention is secured by requiring participants to identify lines as matching or non-matching (subfigures a, c).…”

“…The separate assessment of trial types is also desirable because alcohol-related biases are more evident when impeding disengagement responses, rather than facilitating engagement responses, for both attention [6,18] and action tendencies [16].…”

Implicit and explicit measures of spider fear and avoidance behavior: Examination of the moderating role of working memory capacity

“…For example, in spider anxious individuals, the sight of a spider may directly activate an avoidance tendency, while the explicit belief that spiders are terrifying may also lead to the behavioral decision to avoid rather than to approach the spider. Therefore, future research may use an explicit measure that can reveal a response conflict between the two systems (Sharbanee et al, 2013), such as a measure that captures participants' whish or motivation to overcome their spider fear for instance in treatment-seeking individuals.…”