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This study assessed the separate and combined effects of two important instigators of relapse, alcohol cues and stress, on the salience of alcohol target stimuli and inhibitory control, in 12 male problem drinkers and 16 male controls. Subjects underwent two test sessions where they received alcohol cues (non-alcoholic beer) and/or stress (uncontrollable noise) in a counterbalanced manner. Testing was carried out through validated, computer-based tasks: modified Stroop, gambling-word Shift task; and conventional and modified (Alcohol word) Stop-Signal tasks. Inhibitory control was preferentially impaired to Alcohol stimuli in both groups. Beer and stress in combination increased incentive salience of Alcohol stimuli and moderated self-reported desire for alcohol in problem drinkers but not controls. Results suggest that alcohol cues and stress have interactive effects on subjective motivation, and disinhibit behaviour due to distraction in problem drinkers. Findings from this paradigm may improve understanding and facilitate treatment for relapse prevention in problem drinkers.

This study assessed the separate and combined effects of two important instigators of relapse, alcohol cues and stress, on the salience of alcohol target stimuli and inhibitory control, in 12 male problem drinkers and 16 male controls. Subjects underwent two test sessions where they received alcohol cues (non-alcoholic beer) and/or stress (uncontrollable noise) in a counterbalanced manner. Testing was carried out through validated, computer-based tasks: modified Stroop, gambling-word Shift task; and conventional and modified (Alcohol word) Stop-Signal tasks. Inhibitory control was preferentially impaired to Alcohol stimuli in both groups. Beer and stress in combination increased incentive salience of Alcohol stimuli and moderated self-reported desire for alcohol in problem drinkers but not controls. Results suggest that alcohol cues and stress have interactive effects on subjective motivation, and disinhibit behaviour due to distraction in problem drinkers. Findings from this paradigm may improve understanding and facilitate treatment for relapse prevention in problem drinkers.

Thesis (M.Ed.) (Clinical Psychology) --University of Limpopo, 2008. / There is a considerable literature linking aspects of personality, parenting, and risk behaviors such as alcohol abuse. Three hundred African university students participated in a study of the relationship between personality, assessed with the NEO PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992), and alcohol use. Personality traits did not predict alcohol use among the students. It was also predicted that the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI; Parker, Tupling, & Brown, 1979) would mediate the relationship between personality and alcohol use. Results of the current study revealed no significant relationship between parenting and alcohol use. The results are discussed with regards the use of the NEO PI-R’s validity in the population used. Keyword: Five Factor Model; Parental bonding; Abstainers; Moderate drinkers; Heavy drinkers. / N/A

Using 12-month post treatment Timeline Followback drinking reports, data extrapolated from shorter time windows (e.g., 1 month, 6 months) were used to estimate total annual drinking. The objective was to determine whether data from a shorter time window would provide an estimate of annual drinking sufficiently consistent with the full year report such that it can be used in place of the full report. Data for this study were obtained from problem drinkers who voluntarily participated in a randomized controlled trial of a mail-based intervention. Complete follow-up data were obtained for 467 of the 825 participants who completed a 12-month Timeline Followback of their post intervention drinking. The results of this study suggest that 3 months is the necessary minimum time window to best represent annual posttreatment drinking with alcohol abusers. The major implication of this finding is that alcohol treatment outcome studies can use a shorter posttreatment time window, which is more time and resource efficient, over which to obtain follow-up data with little to no loss in the representativeness of that data.

Selective attention towards alcohol-related cues (i.e., “attentional bias”) is thought to reflect increased incentive motivational value of alcohol and alcohol cues acquired through a history of heavy alcohol use, and as such attentional bias is considered to be a clinically relevant factor contributing to alcohol use disorders. This dissertation consists of two studies that investigated specific mechanisms through which attentional bias might serve to promote alcohol abuse. Study 1 compared magnitude of attentional bias in heavy (n = 20) and light (n = 20) drinkers following placebo and two doses of alcohol (0.45 g/kg and 0.65 g/kg). Heavy drinkers displayed significantly greater attentional bias than did moderate drinkers following placebo. However, heavy drinkers displayed a dose-dependent decrease in response to alcohol. Individual differences in attentional bias under placebo were associated with both self-reported and laboratory alcohol consumption, yet bias following alcohol administration did not predict either measure of consumption. These findings suggest that attentional bias is strongest before a drinking episode begins, and as such might be most influential in terms of initiation of alcohol consumption. Study 2 addressed theoretical accounts regarding potential reciprocal interactions between attentional bias and inhibitory control that might promote excessive alcohol consumption. Fifty drinkers performed a measure of attentional bias and a novel task that measures the degree to which alcohol-related stimuli can increase behavioral activation and reduce the ability to inhibit inappropriate responses. As hypothesized, inhibitory failures were significantly greater following alcohol images compared to neutral images. Further, heightened attentional bias was associated with greater response activation following alcohol images. These findings suggest that alcohol stimuli serve to disrupt mechanisms of behavioral control, and that heightened attentional bias is associated with greater disruption of control mechanisms following alcohol images. Taken together, these studies provide strong evidence of an association between attentional bias in sober individuals and alcohol consumption, suggesting a pronounced role of attentional bias in initiation of consumption. Further, findings show that attention to alcohol cues can serve to disrupt mechanisms of inhibitory control that might be necessary to regulate drinking behavior, suggesting a potential means through which attentional bias might promote consumption.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effect of varying the amount of participant engagement on alcohol expectancy and drinking outcomes during a social/sexual expectancy challenge based on Darkes and Goldman's (1993, 1998) protocol. This study was also intended to provide a test of the efficacy of administering an alcohol/placebo expectancy challenge outside of a live drinking scenario through video presented as part of a computerized intervention. One hundred fifty-eight male participants across three sites were randomized into a no-intervention control group that received non alcohol-related information in a minimally interactive computerized format, a low-level engagement experimental group that received minimally interactive computerized expectancy-related information, and a high-level engagement experimental group that received the same expectancy-related information presented in a more interactive computerized format that included games and audiovisual elements such as video clips, graphics, live narrations, and music. It was hypothesized that high-level engagement participants would report being more engaged in their computerized program and demonstrate greater decreases in social/sexual alcohol expectancies and drinking levels relative to control and low-level engagement participants. Results indicated that while high-level engagement participants reported being more engaged in their interventions, none of the groups exhibited changes in the alcohol expectancies measured. In addition, all three groups experienced significant but comparable decreases in drinking levels. Exploratory follow-up analyses were also conducted to provide suggestions for future directions.

La présente thèse propose la première monographie sur la société des Buveurs d’eau. Cette association artistique de secours mutuels rassembla dans le Paris des années 1840 onze peintres, sculpteurs et écrivains débutants qui, pour la plupart, allaient entrer dans l’histoire non pas grâce à leurs œuvres, mais parce qu’ils allaient devenir les exemples d’un type de créateur : l’artiste ou l’écrivain bohème. Ce fut leur sort à cause d’un livre que l’un d’eux publia en 1851, et ce fut à leur grand dam et au dam de l’histoire. Les Scènes de la vie de bohème d’Henry Murger fondent depuis plus d’un siècle et demi l’idée que l’on se fait de la première bohème parisienne. Elles doivent leur popularité originale à leur adaptation au théâtre de boulevard en 1849 et leur popularité durable à leur adaptation à l’opéra en 1896, dans La Bohème de Puccini. Elles doivent leur place dans les travaux universitaires aux qualités de document et de tableau de mœurs qu’on leur attribue depuis leur parution. Ce sont d’abord ces qualités du livre de Murger, largement admises sans être historiquement vérifiées, et souvent amplifiées depuis trente ans par l’histoire des représentations et par la sociologie, qui rendent les Buveurs d’eau aussi illustres qu’inconnus. C’est également l’obscurité des œuvres de ces hommes, majoritairement artistes, qui éloigne les chercheurs – et en premier lieu les historiens de l’art – de l’histoire de cette société. Or, il est possible de faire cette histoire, à l’aide des outils de l’histoire de l’art d’abord et de l’histoire littéraire ensuite. Ses fondements sont jetés ici et ils répondent à une question trop rarement posée : quel est l’art de la bohème ? / This thesis is the first monograph on the artistic brotherhood of the Water Drinkers, a mutual aid association that united eleven young painters, sculptors and writers in 1840s Paris. Most of these men were to enter history not thanks to their art but because they were to exemplify the bohemian artist or writer. That was due to a book published by one of the group members in 1851—to the disservice of the Water Drinkers and history alike. For more than a century and a half, Henri Murger’s La Vie de Bohème has been the basis of our notion of bohemian Paris. This book owes its initial fame to its theatrical adaptation in 1849 and its lasting fame to its operatic adaptation in 1896, in Puccini’s La Bohème. It owes its place in academic research to its reputation as a historical document and a novel of manners. It is first and foremost this reputation—widely accepted though historically unverified, and frequently enhanced by cultural historians and sociologists over the past three decades—that is responsible for the Water Drinkers being unknown as artists, and famous as bohemians. It is additionally the obscurity of the works of the group members, chiefly visual artists, that is responsible for scholars and especially art historians not studying their history. Yet their history can be studied, by means of art history first and literary history second. This thesis lays the foundation for this study and answers a question too seldom asked: what is bohemian art?