title: Implicit Cognitions and Undergraduate Drinking: Concurrent and Prospective Relationships
Creators: name: Masterman, Paul
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2005
Subjects: subject: Alcohol use
subject: undergraduates
subject: theories of addiction
subject: implicit cognitions

description: Alcohol use is prevalent in undergraduates and is associated with a range of health risk behaviours and negative consequences. Understanding factors that contribute to its uptake and development continues to be an important public health issue. Contemporary cognitive theories of addiction suggest that implicit memory processes have motivational implications for alcohol use. Previous research investigating the role of such processes in drinking outcomes has shown that implicit alcohol-related cognitions are predictive of composite indicators of undergraduate drinking in cross-sectional and prospective studies. However, several limitations to extant research exist. To begin with, concurrent investigations of implicit cognitions have not examined important quantity and frequency dimensions of drinking. It is unclear whether initiation of a drinking session (frequency) and continued consumption (quantity) may be differentially related to memory accessibility. Longitudinal models have been limited to two waves of data across relatively short periods of time (one month) and have not controlled for autocorrelations in memory measures. Three waves of data collection over a longer time frame might better assess prospective relationships between accessibility and drinking and may allow for capture of greater variability in consumption. Lastly, there has been limited research exploring the influence of contextual factors on accessibility for alcohol-related memory associations. According to social learning theory, context should be an important source of memory associations related to drug use and as such requires further exploration. In response to these limitations in the literature, this research program used memory association measures to further examine the role of chronic accessibility of alcohol-related memory, contextual accessibility of alcohol-related memory and their interaction in the prediction of undergraduate drinking. Prior to conducting the research program outlined above, 325 undergraduates participated in two preliminary studies to refine existing memory association measures. Extant association tasks were developed in American university students and refinement was needed to account for any cross-cultural discrepancies in target items. The refinement process resulted in a set of target items that best predicted drinking among Australian undergraduates. Next, the refined memory association measure was used in cross-sectional analysis (Study 1) to investigate potential mediating mechanisms in the relation of associative strength to quantity and frequency dimensions of drinking. Responses from 214 undergraduates provided preliminary evidence that implicit alcohol-related cognitions may play a greater role in decisions to initiate drinking than in the quantity consumed at each session. Extending on outcomes from concurrent analysis, Study 2 began with 162 participants and assessed longitudinal relationships between alcohol-related accessibility and alcohol use at three time points over a one-year period. Cross-lagged results support the utility of alcohol-related implicit cognitions to prospectively predict undergraduate drinking behaviours and vice versa. These results remained after competing explanations of previous use, autocorrelations between memory measures, sensation seeking, and background variables of age and gender were accounted for. Overall findings support suggestions that memory activation may be interpreted as either a predictor or a product of alcohol use. Finally, Study 3 used 106 undergraduate participants to explore the influence of a contextual antecedent previously related to drinking (mood) on accessibility of alcohol-related memory. Results showed that positive mood facilitated accessibility in more experienced drinkers, supporting the proposition that an internal contextual cue (e.g., positive affect) may interact with chronic accessibility to predict individual differences in drinking. Importantly, this study offers further evidence for mechanisms of implicit retrieval processing that might influence decisions to drink on one occasion and not another. Implications of the research program for prevention and treatment programs are discussed and suggestions for future research made. Overall, this research program offers further evidence in support of an implicit cognitions approach to alcohol use behaviours with applications to prevention and treatment efforts.