Neuroscience
Teenagers get a bad press these days. One complaint is that they're forever lurking about getting drunk. Now Erling Moxnes and Lene Jensen have come up with a rather radical proposal based on the idea that teenagers often don't mean to get as drunk as they do. According to the researchers, teenagers frequently over-inebriate because they fail to take account of the stomach delay - the fact that alcohol continues to enter the blood-stream long after a person stops drinking.
Moxnes and Jensen challenged fifty-five 16 and 17-year-olds to achieve a specific blood alcohol concentration level using a personalised computer simulation of the drinking process. The programme asked the teenagers to choose how many bottles of beer to consume each fifteen minutes, whilst giving them periodic feedback on their current blood alcohol level. The simulation had a built in stomach delay of either 22.5 minutes (fairly average for a typical person) or 4.5 minutes.
As the researchers expected, the teenagers massively over-shot the required blood alcohol level, especially when using the simulator with a longer stomach delay. Just as they likely do in real life, the teenagers merely used current feedback of blood alcohol level to inform their decision about how much more to drink. They completely failed to take into account that the blood alcohol level would continue to rise for some time without further intake.
So can youngsters be taught to take account of the stomach delay? A group of students given an advance explanation of the stomach delay performed no better than their peers. However, information about the delay plus the chance to see an advance simulation of the stomach delay (based on a drinking mouse!) did significantly improve the performance of another group, such that they over-shot far less when they completed the simulator challenge.
Moxnes and Jensen said their approach holds great promise - many of their teenage participants reported occasions when they'd gotten far more drunk than they intended, 98 per cent said they found the experiment interesting and 87 per cent said it would make a great teaching tool.
Another implication of these findings it that the folk advice to never go out drinking on an empty stomach may not be so wise after all. It's sensible for people who intend to drink a fixed amount but not for people intending to drink until they reach a desired level of inebriation. "Here we show that it may not be sound advice for inexperienced juveniles that drink according to a simple feedback strategy," the researchers said. "Drinking on a full stomach massively extends the stomach delay, thereby making it much harder to manage one's blood alcohol level."
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Moxnes E, & Jensen L (2009). Drunker than intended: misperceptions and information treatments. Drug and alcohol dependence, 105 (1-2), 63-70 PMID: 19625144
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
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Neuroscience
"Never drink on an empty stomach" may not be such wise advice after all
Teenagers get a bad press these days. One complaint is that they're forever lurking about getting drunk. Now Erling Moxnes and Lene Jensen have come up with a rather radical proposal based on the idea that teenagers often don't mean to get as drunk as they do. According to the researchers, teenagers frequently over-inebriate because they fail to take account of the stomach delay - the fact that alcohol continues to enter the blood-stream long after a person stops drinking.Moxnes and Jensen challenged fifty-five 16 and 17-year-olds to achieve a specific blood alcohol concentration level using a personalised computer simulation of the drinking process. The programme asked the teenagers to choose how many bottles of beer to consume each fifteen minutes, whilst giving them periodic feedback on their current blood alcohol level. The simulation had a built in stomach delay of either 22.5 minutes (fairly average for a typical person) or 4.5 minutes.
As the researchers expected, the teenagers massively over-shot the required blood alcohol level, especially when using the simulator with a longer stomach delay. Just as they likely do in real life, the teenagers merely used current feedback of blood alcohol level to inform their decision about how much more to drink. They completely failed to take into account that the blood alcohol level would continue to rise for some time without further intake.
So can youngsters be taught to take account of the stomach delay? A group of students given an advance explanation of the stomach delay performed no better than their peers. However, information about the delay plus the chance to see an advance simulation of the stomach delay (based on a drinking mouse!) did significantly improve the performance of another group, such that they over-shot far less when they completed the simulator challenge.
Moxnes and Jensen said their approach holds great promise - many of their teenage participants reported occasions when they'd gotten far more drunk than they intended, 98 per cent said they found the experiment interesting and 87 per cent said it would make a great teaching tool.
Another implication of these findings it that the folk advice to never go out drinking on an empty stomach may not be so wise after all. It's sensible for people who intend to drink a fixed amount but not for people intending to drink until they reach a desired level of inebriation. "Here we show that it may not be sound advice for inexperienced juveniles that drink according to a simple feedback strategy," the researchers said. "Drinking on a full stomach massively extends the stomach delay, thereby making it much harder to manage one's blood alcohol level."
_________________________________
Moxnes E, & Jensen L (2009). Drunker than intended: misperceptions and information treatments. Drug and alcohol dependence, 105 (1-2), 63-70 PMID: 19625144Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
- A Small Alcoholic Drink Could Benefit Business Negotiations, Study Finds
It is a tradition in many cultures, especially in East Asia, for business negotiations to be accompanied by drinking alcohol. Motivated in part to wonder why this might be, Pak Hung Au and Jipeng Zhang, at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore...
- Drunk Eyewitnesses Are More Reliable Than Expected
Imagine you are on a jury: would you trust the testimony of a drunk eyewitness? In a surprising new study, Angelica Hagsand and her colleagues report that drunk witnesses performed just as reliably as sober witnesses at recognising a criminal...
- Public Health Leaflets Ignore Findings From Health Psychology
Public health leaflets are failing to incorporate the lessons learned by health psychology research. That’s according to Charles Abraham and colleagues, who looked at the specific case of public health leaflets designed to encourage people to drink...
- Student Drinking
There’s a new approach to reducing student drinking that’s based on the finding that most students think all their mates drink loads more than they do, which encourages them to drink more themselves. ‘Social norms’ campaigns aim to reduce student...
- Beware Short, Wide Glasses
If your New Year’s resolution is to drink less, you may find it useful to know that because of perceptual biases, people tend to pour more liquid into short, wide glasses – ‘tumblers’ – than they pour into tall, elongated, ‘highball’ glasses....