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Aims: This study used a behavioral approach-avoidance task including images of alcoholic beverages to test whether low sensitivity to alcohol (LS) is a phenotypical marker of a dispositional propensity to attribute bottom-up incentive value to naturally conditioned alcohol cues., Design, Setting and Participants: Experimental study with a measured individual difference variable at a university psychology laboratory in Missouri, MO, USA. Participants were 178 emerging adults (aged 18-20 years) varying in self-reported sensitivity to alcohol's acute effects., Measurements: Participants completed the alcohol approach-avoidance task while behavior (response time; RT) and the electroencephalogram (EEG) were recorded. Stimulus-locked event-related potentials (ERPs) provided indices of integrated (top-down and bottom-up) stimulus incentive value (P3 amplitude) and conflict between top-down task demands and bottom-up response propensities (N450 amplitude)., Findings: Linear mixed models showed faster RT for 'alcohol-approach' relative to 'alcohol-avoid' trials for lower-sensitivity (LS) [mean D  ± standard error D (M D  ± SE D ) = 29.51 ± 9.74 ms, t (328)  = 3.03, P = 0.003] but not higher-sensitivity (HS) individuals (M D  ± SE D  = 2.27 ± 9.33 ms, t (328)  = 0.243, P = 0.808). There was enhanced N450 amplitude (response conflict) for alcohol-avoid relative to alcohol-approach trials for LS participants (M D  ± SE D  = 0.811 ± 0.198 μV, Z = 4.108, P < 0.001) and enhanced N450 amplitude for alcohol-approach relative to alcohol-avoid for HS participants (M D  ± SE D  = 0.419 ± 0.188 μV, Z = 2.235, P = 0.025). There was also enhanced P3 amplitude for alcohol-approach relative to alcohol-avoid for LS (M D  ± SE D  = 0.825 ± 0.204 μV, Z = 4.045, P < 0.001) but not HS (M D  ± SE D  = 0.013 ± 0.194 μV, Z = 0.068, P = 0.946)., Conclusions: Findings from a human laboratory study appear to support the notion that low sensitivity to alcohol indexes a propensity to attribute bottom-up incentive value to naturally conditioned alcohol cues., (© 2021 Society for the Study of Addiction.)

Aims: To examine the acute effects of alcohol on working memory (WM) updating, including potential variation across the ascending limb (AL) and descending limb (DL) of the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) time-course., Design: A two-session experiment in which participants were randomly assigned to one of three beverage conditions [alcohol (males: 0.80 g/kg; females: 0.72 g/kg), active placebo (0.04 g/kg) or non-alcohol control (tonic)] and one of two BAC limb testing conditions (AL and DL or DL-only) for the second session, yielding a 3 (beverage) × 2 (time-points tested) × 3 (time-point) mixed factorial design with repeated measures on the latter factor. One of the repeated assessments is 'missing by design' in the DL-only condition., Setting: A psychology laboratory at the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, MO, USA., Participants: Two hundred thirty-one community-dwelling young adults (51% female; aged 21-34 years) recruited from Columbia, MO, USA, tested between 2011 and 2013., Measurements: Latent WM updating performance as indexed by shared variance in accuracy on three WM updating tasks (letter memory, keep track, spatial 2-back) at three time-points., Findings: Multi-group modeling of latent WM updating indicated that performance among participants who consumed placebo or control beverages improved during the second session at time-points corresponding to AL (∆ from baseline in latent mean ± standard error (SE) + 0.5 ± 0.01, P < 0.001) and DL (+ 0.08 ± 0.01, P < 0.001). Alcohol consumption did not impair WM updating (∆ from baseline in latent mean ± SE, at AL: + 0.01 ± 0.01, P = 0.56; at DL: + 0.05 ± 0.01, P < 0.001), but attenuated performance improvements (equality of latent means across beverage groups at AL or DL: Δχ 2 (1)  ≥ 7.53, P < 0.01)., Conclusions: Acute alcohol-induced impairment in working memory updating may be limited, but dampening of practice effects by alcohol could interfere with the completion of novel, unpracticed tasks., (© 2021 Society for the Study of Addiction.)

Background and Aims: In susceptible individuals, cues associated with drug use are theorized to take on incentive-motivational properties, including the ability to reinforce higher-order, drug-related associative learning. This study aimed to test this prediction among people varying in risk for alcohol use disorder., Design, Setting and Participants: Repeated-measures experiment with a measured individual difference variable at a University psychology laboratory in Missouri, USA. One hundred and six young adults (96 contributed complete data) were pre-selected to represent the upper and lower quartiles of self-reported sensitivity to alcohol's acute effects., Measurements: Participants completed a second-order Pavlovian conditioning paradigm in which an initially neutral visual cue (second-order conditional stimulus; CS 2 ) predicted onset of an olfactory cue (first-order conditional stimulus; CS 1 ). Olfactory cues were isolated from alcoholic beverages, sweets and non-comestible substances, each presumed to have a natural history of first-order conditioning. Event-related potential responses to the CS 2 across its conditioning and extinction, and to the CS 1 , provided neurophysiological indices of incentive salience (IS)., Findings: The IS of the alcohol CS 1 was higher among participants low in alcohol sensitivity (LS), relative to their higher-sensitivity (HS) peers. The IS of the CS 2 paired with the alcohol CS 1 increased across the CS 2 conditioning phase among LS but not HS participants. Also, LS (but not HS) individuals also experienced increases in alcohol craving following alcohol CS 1 exposure, and this change was correlated with increases in the IS of the CS 2 paired with the alcohol CS 1 ., Conclusions: Alcoholic beverage odor, a proximal cue for alcohol consumption, appears to reinforce conditioning of neurophysiological responses to a novel cue among low alcohol sensitivity (LS) individuals but not high alcohol sensitivity individuals, providing the first evidence that the LS phenotype may be associated with differences in the conditioned reinforcing properties of alcohol-related cues. These findings support the idea that the LS phenotype may increase alcohol use disorder risk via susceptibility to incentive salience sensitization., (© 2020 Society for the Study of Addiction.)

Aims: To compare the acute effects of alcohol on set-shifting task performance (relative to sober baseline performance) during ascending and descending limb breath alcohol concentration (BrAC), as well as possible moderation of these effects by baseline individual differences., Design: Shifting performance was tested during an initial baseline and a subsequent drinking session, during which participants were assigned randomly to one of three beverage conditions (alcohol, placebo or control) and one of two BrAC limb conditions [ascending and descending (A/D) or descending-only (D-only)]., Setting: A human experimental laboratory on the University of Missouri campus in Columbia, MO, USA., Participants: A total of 222 moderate-drinking adults (ages 21-30 years) recruited from Columbia, MO and tested between 2010 and 2013., Measurements: The outcome measure was performance on set-shifting tasks under the different beverage and limb conditions. Shifting performance assessed at baseline was a key moderator., Findings: Although performance improved across sessions, this improvement was reduced in the alcohol compared with no-alcohol groups (post-drink latent mean comparison across groups, all Ps ≤ 0.05), and this effect was more pronounced in individuals with lower pre-drink performance (comparison of pre- to post-drink path coefficients across groups, all Ps ≤ 0.05). In the alcohol group, performance was better on descending compared with ascending limb (P ≤ 0.001), but descending limb performance did not differ across the A/D and D-only groups., Conclusions: Practising tasks before drinking moderates the acute effects of alcohol on the ability to switch between tasks. Greater impairment in shifting ability on descending compared with ascending breath alcohol concentration is not related to task practice., (© 2016 Society for the Study of Addiction.)

Aims: Although drink drivers exhibit higher levels of trait impulsivity, no studies have tested the hypothesis that drink drivers experience increased impulsivity while intoxicated. We tested this hypothesis for two impulsivity constructs: delay discounting and behavioral inhibition., Design: A within-subjects study comparing performance of drink drivers and non-drink drivers on behavioral measures of impulsivity in alcohol and no-beverage sessions., Setting: A laboratory setting at the University of Missouri., Participants: Twenty-nine young adults who were at least moderate drinkers were recruited from the local community and the University of Missouri., Measurements: Impulsivity was assessed using the Two Choice Impulsivity Paradigm (TCIP) and the Stop-Signal Task. Participants also completed self-report measures of binge drinking and trait impulsivity., Findings: In the no-beverage session, TCIP impulsive choices did not differ between drinking and driving groups (P = 0.93). In the alcohol session, drink drivers made more TCIP impulsive choices on both the ascending (P < 0.01) and descending limb (P < 0.01) of the blood alcohol concentration curve than their peers who did not drink and drive. Drinking and driving groups did not differ on the Stop-Signal Task. Supplementary analyses indicated that effects for the TCIP were not explained by individual differences in trait impulsivity., Conclusions: Individuals who report having three or more drinks before driving show greater impulsivity when under the influence of alcohol than those who do not report heavy drinking before driving., (© 2012 The Authors, Addiction © 2012 Society for the Study of Addiction.)