Alcohol beverage cues impair memory in high social drinkers

Abstract

This study examined the influence of an alcohol beverage cue on memory processes in social drinkers. High and low drinking college students viewed a series of 15 pictures of common objects with the eighth picture either of an alcohol beverage or a soda. For high drinkers, free recall of the alcohol picture was enhanced, and memory for the pictures immediately following the cue was suppressed, relative to the series containing the soda picture. No such effects were observed for light drinkers. Apparently, alcohol cues affect attention and memory in heavy social drinkers. These results have important implications for theories of memory and attention, for explanations of addictive behaviour, and for effective prevention and treatment of alcoholism.

Acknowledgements

We thank Julie Holloway, Andrea Quinton, Ruth Brown, Brandon Anderson, and Cheyann Videon for their valuable assistance in data collection.

Notes

¹We use the term “social drinker” to mean those who are not currently seeking in-patient treatment for alcohol abuse or dependence and are unlikely to have ever received a diagnosis of alcohol abuse or dependence. We recognise, however, that some heavy drinking college students are consuming prodigious quantities such that they could receive a formal diagnosis if only they sought treatment.

²As a consequence of this method of drinker group assignment, the cut off between high and low drinking status varied across the 10 beverage-type×list-order conditions. The drinking status of six participants might have been reclassified had they participated under a different condition. In order to test the robustness of our findings, we conducted two additional analyses: one excluding these six participants, and a second using the entire sample of 148 with participants classified as high or low drinkers based on a median split. For both analyses, high drinkers displayed a significant cue type×position (8 vs. 9–11) interaction demonstrating significantly better recall of the Jack Daniels bottle than of the Pepsi. High drinkers who saw the Jack Daniels bottle had significantly poorer recall of the following three pictures than high drinkers exposed to the Pepsi picture. The cue type×position interaction was not significant in either analysis for low drinkers.