Effects of Task Complexity and Practice on Performance during Acute Alcohol Intoxication

Abstract

A battery of psychological tests was administered to 26 medical students in a counterbalanced cross-over design to determine the effects of an acute dose of alcohol on perceptual, perceptual-motor and cognitive capacities. The tests included: temporal acuity (critical flicker fusion threshold), perceptual speed and attention (Stroop), perceptual-motor coordination (Purdue Pegboard), perceptual-motor speed (simple and choice reaction time), immediate memory (WAIS Digit Span), short-term memory (dichotic stimulation), and intellectual and conceptual capacity (Shipley Institute of Living Scale). Three general conclusions were drawn: (1) alcohol exerted a deteriorating effect on performance on all tasks except the Stroop, (2) retesting 48 hr. later showed that practice or familiarity with the task mitigated the effects of the alcohol, and (3) contrary to the hypothesis advanced by Jellineck and McFarland (1940), no systematic relationship was observed between task complexity and degree of impairment from the alcohol.