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Identifying Inhibitory Subcomponents Associated with Changes in Binge Drinking Behavior: A 6‐Month Longitudinal Design
Author(s) -
Paz Andres L.,
Rosselli Monica,
Conniff Joshua
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
alcoholism: clinical and experimental research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 153
eISSN - 1530-0277
pISSN - 0145-6008
DOI - 10.1111/acer.13830
Subject(s) - binge drinking , response inhibition , inhibitory postsynaptic potential , psychology , stop signal , inhibitory control , correlation , behavioral inhibition , audiology , young adult , task (project management) , developmental psychology , cognition , neuroscience , poison control , injury prevention , medicine , psychiatry , anxiety , geometry , environmental health , mathematics , management , electrical engineering , economics , engineering , latency (audio)
Background Links between response inhibition and young adult problematic drinking (e.g., binge drinking) have been established, but only to an extent. Considering the presence of some inconsistent findings associated with these 2 variables, this 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 6‐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) were correlated with performance on 3 different inhibitory control tasks. Each task was selected to assess separate inhibitory subcomponents: Stop Signal Task (e.g., cancellation of a response), Go/No‐Go Task (e.g., withholding of a response), and Simon Task (e.g., inhibiting response interference). Response inhibition was also compared between 2 groups, those who had a substantial increase in AUQ binge score during participation (in AUQ ) and those who had a substantial decrease in AUQ binge score (de AUQ ). Results A significant correlation was found with a change in AUQ binge score and stop signal reaction time 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 in AUQ performed worse than de AUQ , approached significance. Conclusions The results suggest that the cancellation 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).