Amount of practice and degree of attentional control have no influence on the adverse effect of alcohol in word categorization and visual search tasks

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This study investigated ways in which practice, and the closely related factor of automaticity, might modify the effects of alcohol (0.8 mllkg body weight) on word categorization and visual search. There were several possibilities: (1) Alcohol might have less effect on practiced than on unpracticed tasks, (2) practice with alcohol might allow adaptation to its effects, (3) alcohol might alter the rate of learning, and (4) alcohol might have less effect on tasks requiring automatic, as opposed to controlled, processing. Subjects participated in one session each day for either 2 or 5 days. The results revealed that alcohol impaired unpracticed and practiced performance to the same extent. In addition, those who practiced with alcohol for 4 days improved when switched to no alcohol on Day 5. Although alcohol impaired performance, there was no evidence that it reduced the benefit obtained from practice, that is, the rate oflearning. Finally, almost identical effects of alcohol were observed for consistently mapped and variably mapped conditions (as de­ veloped by Schneider & Shiffrin, 1977, to illustrate automatic and controlled processing, respec­ tively). The four possibilities can therefore be answered as follows: Several days of practice at a task does not reduce the impairment caused by alcohol. There is no evidence for either state­ specific practice or different rates of learning with and without alcohol. The effect of alcohol is not influenced by the degree of involvement of attentional control in a task. Consider the following reasons why performance of a task may be more or less sensitive to alcohol effects: First, extended practice may minimize the influence of alcohol. Second, such practice may be more useful if obtained un­ der alcohol-for example, it may be possible to learn to compensate for its effects-or, alternatively, alcohol may reduce the benefit obtained from practice so that it may take longer to attain levels of automaticity at which drug and stress effects are minimized (Fisk & Schneider, 1982). Third, task difficulty may be a significant factor such that attentionally demanding tasks may remain vulnerable to alcohol effects at levels ofpractice at which less demand­ ing tasks have gained immunity.