Search resultsAlcohol belongs here: Assessing alcohol-related inhibitory control with a contextual go/no-go task
There is a growing awareness of the need to explore the social and environmental milieus that drive alcohol consumption and related cognitions. The current study examined the extent to which alcohol-congruent and incongruent drinking contexts modulate alcohol-related inhibitory control using a novel go/no-go task. One hundred and eight participants (Mage = 20 years; SD = 4.87) were instructed to inhibit their responses to visual alcoholic (alcohol/no-go condition, n = 50) or nonalcoholic stimuli (alcohol/go condition, n = 58) depicted in an alcohol-congruent (pub), incongruent (library), or context-free (control) condition. Participants in the alcohol/go condition exhibited higher false alarm rates (FAR) toward nonalcoholic stimuli and faster reaction times (RTs) to alcoholic stimuli depicted in the alcohol-congruent and incongruent context compared with the alcohol/no-go condition. In contrast, FAR toward alcoholic stimuli (alcohol/no-go condition) were not significantly affected by drinking context, but RT was faster when nonalcoholic stimuli were presented in alcohol-incongruent (i.e., library) compared with alcohol-congruent (i.e., pub) contexts. The discussion turns to potential explanations for these findings, suggesting that social drinkers might exhibit approach tendencies toward alcoholic images that translate into errors toward nonalcoholic stimuli, and that image complexity influences response inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)Public Health Significance—The current study examines the influence of environmental drinking context on social drinker’s ability to withhold responses to alcoholic cues. Findings suggest that individuals who drink alcohol may show an automatic approach bias toward alcoholic stimuli depicted in images of real-world contexts when they are not under the influence of alcohol. Furthermore, the complexity of images employed within alcohol research (e.g., context vs. no context) might influence alcohol-related response inhibition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved)