Alcohol, reaction time and memory: A meta-analysis

Moderate doses of alcohol impair performance on a variety of information processing tasks. Two separate meta‐analyses were conducted on the results of (1) reaction time studies, and (2) recognition memory studies, representing 25 and 16 different task conditions, respectively. In both cases, perform...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The British journal of psychology 1993-08, Vol.84 (3), p.301-317
Main Authors: Maylor, Elizabeth A., Rabbitt, Patrick M. A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alcohol
Alcohol consumption
Alcohol Drinking - adverse effects
Alcohol Drinking - psychology
Alcohol use
Alcohol, Denatured
Biological and medical sciences
Cognition & reasoning
Comparison
Dose-Response Relationship, Drug
Ethanol
Factors
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Humans
Learning. Memory
Memory
Mental Recall - drug effects
Motor ability
Psychological aspects
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Reaction time
Reaction time (Psychology)
Reaction Time - drug effects
Reaction times
Recognition memory
Systematic review
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Moderate doses of alcohol impair performance on a variety of information processing tasks. Two separate meta‐analyses were conducted on the results of (1) reaction time studies, and (2) recognition memory studies, representing 25 and 16 different task conditions, respectively. In both cases, performance with alcohol (either 0.8 or 1.0 ml/kg body weight) was plotted as a function of performance with no alcohol. For reaction time, a linear fit accounted for 99.7 per cent of the variance. The same function applied not only to the mean but to the distribution of reaction times from the 5th to the 95th percentiles. For recognition memory, a linear fit accounted for 96.2 per cent of the variance in accuracy (expressed as the logarithm of proportion correct). Thus alcohol appears to have a general linear effect on information processing, rather than specific effects on a subset of stages. It is concluded that the results are consistent with a reduced processing resources hypothesis for the impairment with alcohol.
ISSN:0007-1269
2044-8295
DOI:10.1111/j.2044-8295.1993.tb02485.x