The influence of alcohol

Those familiar with the investigations of pharmacopsychology may feel that the direct and unanalyzed effects of alcohol on capacity for mental and motor work are sufficiently well known to make further studies superfluous. Recent studies, such as those of the Nutrition Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution have, to be sure, gone far toward establishing the nature of some of these effects. They do not pretend, however, to have exhausted the subject, and they leave certain questions still unanswered. From the practical point of view, at least, the effects of alcohol and the effects of alcoholic beverages are not identical. The present study inquires not only into the effects of alcohol, but, into those effects when produced by the consumption in various amounts of a beverage of known alcoholic content. In the present instance the comparison is mainly of the effects of alcohol with those of caffeine, and for this reason, in part, the technique of an earlier caffeine investigation was for the most part adopted. The general effects of alcohol as shown in the present study, based on a relatively simple procedure, are similar to those derived by the more laborious technique of the Nutrition Laboratory. The direction of the changes produced is the same, the effects of a wider range of experimental doses are shown and these effects are not absent from the complex reactions. It is therefore believed that in addition to the specific bearing on the effects of beer drinking and the comparison of the effects of alcohol and caffeine on the same set of processes, the present study makes a supplementary contribution to the recent and more elaborate investigations of the effect of alcohol in general. Processes and activities were selected for measurement which as closely as possible resemble those which are grossly disturbed in alcoholic intoxication. By measuring the efficiency of performance on blank days, control days, and alcohol days, in these processes, such characteristic effects as may follow upon drinking various amounts of beer may be made out. The nine faculties studied are: steadiness of hand; eye-hand coordination; speed of tapping; control of speech mechanism; mental calculation; logical relations; quickness of learning; pulse rate; and memory of paired associates. Subjects were adult males. From the point of view of alcohol habits they ranged from a total abstainer through degrees of occasional or moderate use, to the fairly regular but not excessive use of alcoholic beverages. The alcohol effect varies considerably with the idiosyncrasy of the individual and with the nature of the test. It is therefore wise to begin with a study of the individual reactions in each type of work, before combining the records in the form of average tendencies. In all of the mental and motor tests here used the effect of alcohol is to reduce the score. The hand is made less steady, motor coordinations less accurate and rapid, rate of tapping is reduced, the processes of color naming, naming opposites, and adding are slowed down, and the rate of substitution learning is less rapid. In pulse rate, which must be considered separately from these mental and motor tests, the effect of alcohol is to produce a positive acceleration. In all cases the effect varies directly with the size of the dose. In the association processes the effect of the smaller doses here employed has disappeared by the end of the experimental day, three hours after the conclusion of the drinking period. In the case of the motor processes (tapping, steadiness, coordination) and pulse rate, recovery is slower, and even in the case of the smaller doses of alcohol there is usually inferior performance or change of rate at the end of the day. This report is to be concluded in the January-March 1924 issue of this journal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)