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Alcohol and Cognitive Function: Assessment in Everyday Life and Laboratory Settings Using Mobile Phones
Author(s) -
Tiplady Brian,
Oshinowo Bami,
Thomson Joanne,
Drummond Gordon Blair
Publication year - 2009
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/j.1530-0277.2009.01049.x
Subject(s) - everyday life , blood alcohol , alcohol , placebo , cognition , mobile phone , psychology , phone , medicine , crossover study , audiology , computer science , psychiatry , injury prevention , poison control , medical emergency , telecommunications , biochemistry , chemistry , alternative medicine , linguistics , philosophy , pathology , political science , law
Background: Mobile phone (cellphone) technology makes it practicable to assess cognitive function in a natural setting. We assessed this method and compared impairment of performance due to alcohol in everyday life with measurements made in the laboratory. Methods: Thirty‐eight volunteers (20 male, aged 18–54 years) took part in the everyday study, completing assessments twice a day for 14 days following requests sent by text messages to the mobile phone. Twenty‐six of them (12 male, aged 19–54) took part in a subsequent two‐period crossover lab study comparing alcohol with no alcohol (placebo). Results: Everyday entries with 5 or more units of alcohol consumed in the past 6 hours (inferred mean blood alcohol concentration 95 ml/100 ml) showed higher scores for errors in tests of attention and working memory compared with entries with no alcohol consumed that day. Response times were impaired for only 1 test, sustained attention to response. The laboratory comparison of alcohol (mean blood alcohol concentration 124 mg/100 ml) with placebo showed impairment to both reaction time and error scores for all tests. A similar degree of subjective drunkenness was reported in both settings. Conclusions: We found that mobile phones allowed practical research on cognitive performance in an everyday life setting. Alcohol impaired function in both laboratory and everyday life settings at relevant doses of alcohol.