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Affiliation
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Department of Psychology, Charles Schmidt College of Science Florida Atlantic University, 2912 College Ave, Davie, FL, 33314, USA. |
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Abstract
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BACKGROUND: Links between response inhibition and young adult problematic drinking (e.g., binge drinking) has been established, but only to an extent. Considering the presence of some inconsistent findings associated with these two variables, the present study proposes the need to investigate the extent in which different inhibitory subcomponents are associated with binge drinking behaviors of the same sample.
METHODS: Through the use of a six-month longitudinal design, changes in Alcohol Use Questionnaire (AUQ) binge score of 163 college students (50.3% female) with a mean age of 21.06 years (SD = 1.83) was correlated with performance on three different inhibitory control tasks. Each task was selected to assess separate inhibitory subcomponents: Stop Signal Task (e.g., cancelation of a response), Go/No-Go (e.g., withholding of a response), and Simon Task (e.g., inhibiting response interference). Response inhibition was also compared between two groups, those who had a substantial increase in AUQ binge score during participation (inAUQ) and those who had a substantial decrease in AUQ binge score (deAUQ).
RESULTS: A significant correlation was found with a change in AUQ binge score and stop signal reaction time (SSRT) among females only, where an increase in binge drinking score positively correlated with a reduced ability to cancel an already-initiated inhibitory response. Differences in inhibitory performance, where inAUQ performed worse than deAUQ, approached significance.
CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that the cancelation of a prepotent response, as opposed to the withholding of response or interference inhibition, is a more sensitive inhibitory measure associated with increases in binge drinking behavior among female young adult college students. Further exploration of inhibitory subcomponents relative to substance use is greatly needed (e.g., more extensive longitudinal designs and neuroimaging techniques). This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Language: en |