The present study attempted to show that alcohol's effects on aggression are mediated by attentional processes. Sixty-four college men over the age of 21 were provoked by a confederate and then distracted or non-distracted in order to determine the effects of attention on aggression. It was hypothesized that alcohol-distract subjects would be least aggressive, while alcohol-no distract subjects would be least aggressive. Contrary to predictions, the pattern of results suggested that alcohol-distract subjects are most aggressive and that alcohol-no distract subjects are the least aggressive. Although the data failed to support an attention-allocation model, future research should attempt to test such a link using other paradigms. / Master of Science

The primary goals of this research were: 1) to develop an alcohol intoxication detection aid (IDA) that can be used to estimate reliably and accurately another person's level of alcohol impairment; 2) to evaluate the effect of alcohol on a computer-controlled critical tracking task (CTT), which assesses skills important to driving a vehicle; and 3) to examine the relationships between these two instruments and measured blood alcohol concentration (BAC). Teplin and Lutz (1985) developed an alcohol intoxication checklist for use in a hospital emergency room. Their results indicated a high correlation (.85) between actual BAC and intoxication estimates obtained by applying their checklist. This thesis refined and extended this prior checklist procedure for use with college populations, and included procedures to measure its validity and reliability. The CTT is a computer task which requires a subject to make a response to a brief digital display. Dependent measures include subjects' response time and error rate. Subjects' performance was consequently correlated with their BAC. The subjects were university students (n = 232) consuming alcoholic beverages at three regularly scheduled weekend fraternity parties. Subjects were recruited for testing from among those in attendance at these parties. Subjects were of legal drinking age. Results for both instruments were instructive and encouraging. Although reliability and validity coefficients for use of the IDA during the first party were unacceptably low. the changes made in the experimental methodology after this testing proved beneficial. Results of IDA use at the third party showed substantial increases in both interrater reliability and correlation with actual BAC. These results, however, were found to vary across individual judges. With CTT performance, mean response time and mean error rate were both reliable indicators of intoxication, and results stood up fairly well under a signal detection approach to the data analysis. Implications for use of both instruments in real-world settings are discussed. / Master of Science

Eight subjects participated in an assembly task in which they assembled a simulated circuit board. The task required exact placement of three similarly coded resistors, which were chosen from a set of five resistors, followed by adjusting a voltmeter to a specified value. Participants performed the assembly task under various blood alcohol concentrations (Placebo, 0.05%, 0.07%, and 0.09%) to assess the effects of alcohol and workload on quality and productivity. Three levels of paced task conditions and two levels of unpaced task conditions were used for the assembly task conditions. In this study, seven measures of performance were assessed: number of correctly completed units, number of orientation errors, number of position errors, frequency and magnitude of meter adjustment errors, number of improper resistors, and number of incomplete units. A significant alcohol effect (p < 0.0001) was evident for all the dependent variables in the two pacing paradigms with the exception of the magnitude of the meter adjustment errors. Under the paced paradigm, the task condition was significant (p < 0.0001) for the number of completed units, the number of position errors, the number of orientation errors and the number of completed units. Unpaced task condition revealed significance (p < 0.0001) for all the dependent variables with the exception of meter adjustment magnitude. Interactions of alcohol by paced task condition were significant for the number of inaccurate units (p < 0. 00161) and the number of completed units (p < 0. 0001). Unpaced condition revealed interaction effects for the number of completed units (p < 0. 0001), the number of position errors (p < 0. 0001), the number of resistor errors. / Master of Science

The objective of the present study was to investigate the use of a video game task in comparison to _a pursuit tracking task for the purpose of· detecting alcohol impairment. To carry out this objective, the two tasks used in this study were compared for difficulty in Phase I. The conclusions from Phase I are: 1) that subjects selected higher RPM's to represent a higher level of difficulty, and 2) that the higher RPM's selected resulted in decreased performance compared to lower RPM's. Performance on the two tasks under various levels of BAC was then measured in Phase II. The general conclusions from Phase II are: 1) that performance of both tasks was significantly affected by BAC and Difficulty, and 2) that a greater decrement in performance due to BAC was observed for the video game task than for the pursuit tacking task. The results and implications of the two phases of research will be discussed further in the following two subsections. / Master of Science

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This dissertation aims at determining the possible effects of alcoholic hangover on human behaviour by examining the effects of acute alcohol consumption (> 1g/kg) 14-16 hours following alcohol ingestion on simple and choice reaction times, divided attention tasks and driving skills. The hypotheses are that cognitive and behavioural functioning is impaired even after the blood alcohol concentration level has returned to zero The California Computerised Assessment Package (CALCAP) together with selected driving skills tasks, repeated breath analysis measures, a biographical questionnaire, a subjective hangover rating scale, and blood glucose tests were administered to a group of 63 mixed gender student volunteers. The experimental group and was tested prior to, and during hangover. The control group was pre- and post-tested in order to determif.le the impact of practice effects. Results indicate that hangover individuals performed less well than control subjects on measures of reaction time and driving precision. Further more, the findings show that subjective experience of hangover is not a good predictor of reaction time or driving performance, and that the absence of hangover symptoms does not guarantee full mental recovery. Statistical analysis of the data showed that post-test findings could not be attributed to a gender effect. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2000.

D.Litt. et Phil. / The present work set out to evaluate whether the division on a neuropsychological basis between Korsakoff's amnesia and Kevin Walsh's Adaptive Behavioural Syndrome (ABS) was justified (Walsh, 1989). The research took the approach that the supposed agents responsible for the ABS (neurotoxicity of alcohol) and Korsakoff's syndrome (thiamine avitaminosis) had not been proven to produce site-specific lesions. Using Bowden (1990) as a point of departure, Luria's (1973) classic discussion of the hierarchical nature of brain functioning was used to generate the hypothesis that the two topographical areas of the brain are both subject to stimulation via the arousal mechanisms of the reticular activating system of the brainstem, and that this might well result in cortical arousal deficiencies giving rise to the frontal and axial deficits seen in alcohol related syndromes. Evidence was found, using techniques of analysis developed by the Boston group (Kaplan, 1980), that in fact the frontally-based ABS was less vulnerable to brainstem dysfunction, and that when arousal levels began to increase, as in the arousing neuropsychological evaluation environment, signs of frontal dysfunction waned, whilst signs of axial mnemonic difficulties did not. This discrepancy was explained using Luria's information that the frontal cortical areas are richly supplied with connections to the reticular activating system of the brainstem, whereas the axial structures are not so richly endowed. The conclusion was reached that the ASS and l(orsakoff's dysfunctions are two sides of the same coin, and that the division between the two is both an artifact of research designs in the past that have excluded those with signs of alcohol dementia ('pure' amnesias), and the heretofore invisible moderating influence of the acetaldehyde-damaged noradrenergic pathways of the brainstem. The post-traumatic amnesias seen following closed head injury and acute stress were discussed as contributing to the generalisability of the conclusions, and the role of neuropsychologists in the future within the field was discussed.

Despite extensive research into the effects of alcohol consumption, there is no clear understanding into the mechanisms underlying human information processing impairment. The acute consumption of alcohol was investigated to determine the implications for human information processing capabilities, and to identify the extent to which these implications were stage-specific. Further aims included the investigation and quantification of caffeine-induced antagonism of alcohol impairment. Moreover, the aforementioned relationships were investigated in morning versus evening conditions. A test battery of six resource-specific tasks was utilised to measure visual perceptual, cognitive and sensory-motor performance, fashioned to return both simple and complex measures of each task. The tasks implemented were: visual perceptual performance (accommodation, visual detection, visual pattern recognition); cognition (memory recall- digit span); and motor output (modified Fitts‟ and a driving simulated line-tracking). Performance measures were recorded by the respective computer based tasks. Physiological variables measured included heart rate frequency, heart rate variability (RMSSD, High and Low Frequency Power) and body temperature. Saccade speed, saccade amplitude, pupil size and fixation duration were the oculomotor parameters measured. Three groups of participants (alcohol, caffeine+alcohol and control) n=36 were studied, split evenly between sexes in a mixed repeated/non-repeated measures design. The control group performed all test batteries under no influence. The alcohol group performed test batteries one and two sober, and three and four under the influence of a 0.4 g/kg dose of alcohol. Group caffeine+alcohol conducted test battery one sober, two under the effect of caffeine only (4 mg/kg), and three and four under the influence of both caffeine and alcohol (0.4 g/kg). The third test battery demonstrated the effects of alcohol during the inclining phase of the blood alcohol curve, and the fourth represented the declining phase. Morning experimentation occurred between 10:00 - 12: 45 and 10:30 -13:15 with evening experimentation between 19:00 - 21:30 and 19:30 - 22:00. Acute alcohol consumption at a dose of approximately 0.4 g/kg body weight effected an average peak breath alcohol concentration of 0.062 % and 0.059 % for the alcohol and caffeine+alcohol groups respectively. Task-related visual perceptual performance demonstrated significant decrements for simple reaction time, choice reaction time and error rate. Cognitive performance demonstrated no significant performance decrements, while motor performance indicated significant decrements in target accuracy only. Physiological parameters in response to alcohol consumption showed significantly decreased heart rate variability (RMSSD) in the modified Fitts‟ task only. A significant decrease in saccade amplitude in the memory task was the only change in oculomotor parameters. Prior caffeine consumption demonstrated limited antagonism to task-related alcohol impairment, significantly improving performance only in reduced error rate while reading. Caffeine consumption showed stimulating effects on physiological parameters, significantly increasing heart rate and heart rate variability when compared to alcohol alone. The design of the tasks allows for comparison between complex and simple task performance, indicating resource utilisation and depletion. Complex tasks demonstrated higher resource utilisation, however with no statistical performance differences to simple tasks. Physiological parameters showed greater change in response to alcohol consumption, than did the performance measures. Alcohol consumption imposed significant changes in physiological and oculomotor parameters for cognitive tasks only, significantly increasing heart rate frequency and decreasing heart rate variability, skin temperature and saccade amplitude. Caffeine consumption showed no antagonism of alcohol-induced performance measures. Physiological measures showed that caffeine consumption imposed stimulating effects in only the neural reflex and memory tasks, significantly increasing heart rate frequency and heart rate variability. Prior caffeine consumption significantly decreased fixation duration in the memory task only. The time of day at which alcohol was consumed demonstrated significant performance and physiological implications. Results indicated that morning consumption of alcohol imposes greater decrements in performance and larger fluctuations in physiological parameters than the decrements in evening experimental sessions. It can be concluded that alcohol consumption at a dose of 0.4 g/kg affects all stages in the information processing chain. Task performance indicates that alcohol has a greater severity on the early stages of information processing. Conversely, under the influence of alcohol an increased task complexity induces greater effects on central stage information processing. In addition, caffeine consumption at a dose of 4 mg/kg prior to alcohol does not antagonise the alcohol-induced performance decrements.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Aim: The goals of the current studies were to (a) create a measure of affective traits that can assess both the discrete and the underlying dimensions of affective traits and (b) examine the reliability and validity of the scale in two independent samples. Participants: Participants were undergraduate students at a large, public US mid-western university (Study 1 N = 616; Study 2 N = 510). The mean age for Study 1 was 21.10 (SD = 5.05) and 21.02 for Study 2 (SD = 4.96). Design: Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to examine internal factor structure of the scale. A series of correlational, reliability, and hierarchical regression analyses were conducted to examine convergent, divergent, and criterion-related validity of the new scale. Findings: Activation-Valence Affective Traits Survey (AVATS) had good reliability and adequate construct, convergent, and discriminant validity as a measure of affective traits. Conclusions: This study introduces a new scale for measuring affective traits that offers more information on both the categorical and dimensional conceptualizations of affective traits, which also has predictive utility in relation to problem-related alcohol consumption.

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