Abstract
BackgroundAlcohol impairs response inhibition; however, it remains contested whether such impairments affect a general inhibition system, or whether affected inhibition systems are embedded in, and specific to, each response modality. Further, alcohol-induced impairments have not been disambiguated between proactive and reactive inhibition mechanisms, and nor have the contributions of action-updating impairments to behavioural ‘inhibition’ deficits been investigated. MethodsForty Participants (25 female) completed both a manual and a saccadic stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) task before and after a 0.8g/kg dose of alcohol and, on a separate day, before and after a placebo. Blocks in which participants were required to ignore the signal to stop or make an additional ‘dual' response were included to obtain measures of proactive inhibition as well as updating of attention and action. ResultsAlcohol increased manual but not saccadic SSRT. Proactive inhibition was weakly reduced by alcohol, but increases in the reaction times used to baseline this contrast prevent clear conclusions regarding response caution. Finally, alcohol also increased secondary dual response times of the dual task uniformly as a function of the delay between tasks, indicating an effect of alcohol on action-updating or execution. ConclusionsThe modality-specific effects of alcohol favour the theory that response inhibition systems are embedded within response modalities, rather than there existing a general inhibition system. Concerning alcohol, saccadic control appears relatively more immune to disruption than manual control, even though alcohol affects saccadic latency and velocity. Within the manual domain, alcohol affects multiple types of action updating, not just inhibition.
Highlights
Impaired behavioural control is strongly linked with the development of substance abuse disorders such as alcoholism (e.g., Lawrence et al, 2009; Nigg et al, 2006)
In order to extrapolate from these manual tasks, one must assume that they represent all response inhibition processes
Males reached a higher breath alcohol concentration (BrAC) than females by 6.4 μg/100 ml; this difference was statistically significant (t(38) = 2.52, p = 0.016, d = 0.82)
Summary
Impaired behavioural control is strongly linked with the development of substance abuse disorders such as alcoholism (e.g., Lawrence et al, 2009; Nigg et al, 2006). There exist reports where alcohol had no significant effect (Rose and Duka, 2008, 2007), taken together, these studies suggest that even a relatively small dose of alcohol (e.g., 0.45 g/kg) normally increases the number of commission errors in the go/no-go task or slows the manual stop signal reaction time (SSRT) in the stop signal task. Methods: Forty Participants (25 female) completed both a manual and a saccadic stop-signal reaction time (SSRT) task before and after a 0.8 g/kg dose of alcohol and, on a separate day, before and after a placebo. Conclusions: The modality-specific effects of alcohol favour the theory that response inhibition systems are embedded within response modalities, rather than there existing a general inhibition system. Alcohol affects multiple types of action updating, not just inhibition
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