The relative contributions of risk taking propensity, response inhibition, and attentional bias in adolescent alcohol consumption.
Creators: name: Skubera, Magda
name: Shaw, Daniel
name: Diggins, Jake
name: Green, Rachel
name: Pennington, Charlotte Rebecca
Publisher: name: Open Science Framework
Year: 2023
Subjects: subject: Health Psychology
subject: Social Psychology
subject: Psychology
subject: FOS: Psychology
subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
subject: alcohol consumption
subject: risk taking
subject: Go/No-Go
subject: inhibitory control
subject: BART
subject: adolescent alcohol consumption
subject: attentional bias
subject: response inhibition
subject: reward sensitivity
subject: adolescence

description: Alcohol misuse is the biggest risk factor for death, ill-health and disability among 15-49-year-olds in the UK (Burton &amp; Sheron, 2018). Drinking alcohol is typical among adolescents (44% of 15–19-year-olds in Europe drink alcohol) and heavy episodic (“binge”) drinking is more prevalent among adolescents than the general adult population (WHO, 2018). Identifying the determinants of early alcohol consumption is therefore a public health priority. One factor shown consistently to influence the (mis)use of alcohol in both adulthood and adolescence is attentional bias – that is, the preferential attention allocated involuntarily towards alcohol cues (see Field et al., 2014; Pennington et al., 2020). Furthermore, adolescence is characterised more generally by heightened reward sensitivity and risk-taking behaviours (Defoe et al., 2015; Galván, 2013) as well as reduced capacity to inhibit automatic and impulsive behaviours that are contextually inappropriate (Diamond, 2013; López-Caneda et al., 2014). Behavioural research has revealed relationships between these alcohol-unspecific cognitive sub-processes (risk taking propensity and response inhibition) and alcohol-specific processes (attentional bias and consumption; Fernie et al., 2010; van Hemel-Ruiter et al., 2015a; 2015b). However, some studies have used behavioural tasks that have recently been shown to be unreliable (e.g., the visual probe task; see Jones et al., 2018), and there is a lack of research in this important area. This project aims to examine the relative contributions of risk taking propensity, response inhibition, and alcohol-related attentional bias in adolescent alcohol consumption. It will also assess whether risk taking propensity and response inhibition interact to predict alcohol-related attentional bias and consumption in adolescence. Two-hundred and fifty-eight participants, aged between 18 (UK legal drinking age) and 25 (late adolescence) will complete experimental tasks that measure risk taking propensity (the Balloon Analogue Risk Taking [BART] Task), response inhibition (Go/No-Go Association Task), alcohol-related attentional bias (Visual Conjunction Search Task) and a self-report measure of their alcohol consumption over the past week (Alcohol Timeline Follow-back). This research will provide insights into the psychological mechanisms driving alcohol consumption in adolescence, which has the potential to inform policy decisions and corporate social responsibility, as well as the development of tailored interventions to reduce alcohol-related harm.