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Biomedical subjects

R E Vuchinich

Publications and source records attributed to R E Vuchinich.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2001

Relative efficacy of a brief motivational intervention for college student drinkers.

The authors evaluated the efficacy of Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS - L. A. Dimeff, J. S. Baer, D. R. Kivlahan, & G. A. Marlatt, 1999), a single session of drinking-related feedback intended to reduce heavy drinking and related harm. College student drinkers (N = 99) were assigned to BASICS, an educational intervention, or an assessment-only control group. At 3 months postintervention. there were no overall significant group differences, but heavier drinking BASICS participants showed greater reductions in weekly alcohol consumption and binge drinking than did heavier drinking control and education participants. At 9 months, heavier drinking BASICS participants again showed the largest effect sizes. BASICS participants evaluated the intervention more favorably than did education participants. This study suggests that BASICS may be more efficacious than educational interventions for heavier drinking college students.

Adult↗
PubMed2000

Creating a research context for reducing risk and obtaining informed consent in human alcohol studies.

Alcohol consumption by problem drinkers in research involves risks and raises ethical issues. Disease perspectives, however, exaggerate the level of risk and have questionable validity and generality. These accounts suggest that because problem drinkers cannot exert volitional control over drinking, alcohol studies undermine their capacity to give informed consent and entail unacceptable risks of promoting abusive drinking. Alcoholics' purported propensity for denial is also thought to compromise the assessment of risks. Contemporary theory and research question these assertions and help guide the creation of research contexts that reduce risk and promote informed consent. Key contextual elements are (a) the extent of availability of alcohol and other valued activities in participants' natural environments, which reduce the appeal of drinking in research contexts, and (b) whether contingencies exist for inaccurate verbal reports.

Alcoholism↗
PubMed1998

Hyperbolic temporal discounting in social drinkers and problem drinkers.

Two studies compared participants, distinguished by their typical alcohol consumption, on the degree to which they discounted the value of delayed, hypothetical amounts of money. Heavy social drinkers in Study 1 and problem drinkers in Study 2 both showed greater temporal discounting than light social drinkers; this difference was stronger in Study 2. Both studies found that a hyperbolic function described temporal discounting more accurately than an exponential function. These results are consistent with extending behavioral theories of intertemporal choice to characterize the determinants of alcohol consumption. The discounting differences also are consistent with more general behavioral economic and economic theories of addiction, although the hyperbolic functional form is inconsistent with the exponential discounting function in economic theory. The drinker groups also differed on impulsiveness and time orientation questionnaires, with light drinkers being less impulsive and more future oriented; however, these measures were not strongly correlated with the measure of temporal discounting.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1997

Does the repeated gambles procedure measure impulsivity in social drinkers.

P. Sarfati and K. G. White (1991) found that heavy social drinkers were more risk averse than light drinkers in a repeated gambles procedure. Given a theoretical argument that risk aversion corresponds to impulsivity in this context, this result implied that heavy drinkers are more impulsive than light drinkers. The present study sought to replicate this finding, and, by administering questionnaire measures of impulsivity, to explore the relation between drinking and impulsivity as measured by the repeated gambles procedure and impulsivity as measured by questionnaires. Results showed more impulsivity among heavy drinkers than light drinkers on the questionnaires but not on choices during the repeated gambles procedure. These results question the utility of the repeated gambles procedure as a measure of impulsivity and as a useful vehicle for studying the drinking-impulsivity relation.

Adult↗
PubMed1994

Environmental events surrounding natural recovery from alcohol-related problems.

Environmental events influence relapse and recovery patterns in treated alcoholics, and the present study investigated the role of events in recoveries achieved without treatment. Subjects were 21 abstinent and 18 active problem drinkers; none had received treatment, and recovered subjects had abstained an average of 6 years. During structured interviews, event occurrences were assessed during a 3-year period that began 2 years before the attainment of abstinence by recovered subjects and were compared with event occurrences during a matched 3-year interval for active drinkers, which equated the groups on the length of recall. Collaterals verified subjects' reports of their drinking practices, events and absence of treatment. Recovered subjects showed (1) heightened health concerns and a relatively stable work situation during the year preceding initial abstinence, (2) a reduction in health events following resolution and (3) a decrease in legal events and total negative events across the 3 years surrounding resolution. Although qualified by the relatively small sample and the retrospective, correlational design, these findings suggest that (1) changes in several areas of functioning evolve over time to motivate initial abstinence and to maintain continued resolution, and (2) variables that motivate initial behavior change differ somewhat from those that maintain it.

Adult↗
PubMed1992

Adequacy of recall of drinking patterns and event occurrences associated with natural recovery from alcohol problems.

The adequacy of recall of drinking and events surrounding natural recovery from alcohol problems was investigated with 21 abstinent and 18 active untreated problem drinkers. During structured interviews, drinking was assessed for 6 years, and events were assessed for 1 year; both assessment periods ended about 6 years before data collection, which corresponded with the beginning of sobriety for abstinent subjects. The accuracy of subject reports of both variable classes was evaluated through comparisons with collateral reports, and the reliability of drinking reports was evaluated by reinterviewing a subset of subjects about 2 months after the first assessment. Reliability was generally high for subjects' drinking reports. Subject-collateral agreements were significant for drinking and event variables that collaterals could readily observe, but not for variables that were less observable. Current drinking status and the length of recall did not influence reporting accuracy. With some qualifications, these findings support the use of structured recall procedures to investigate drinking patterns and environmental circumstances related to natural recovery and highlight limitations in the use of collaterals as a verification method.

Adult↗
PubMed1991

Agreement between subject and collateral verbal reports of alcohol consumption in older adults.

The accurate measurement of alcohol consumption in natural environments is a focal empirical issue in studies of the determinants of drinking. Four studies investigated agreement between subject and collateral questionnaire reports of drinking by adults over age 60 years (N = 83), and three of these studies also assessed agreement between daily subject and collateral prospective reports of subject drinking over 4 (Study 2) or 12 (Studies 3 and 4) week intervals. Subject and collateral questionnaire reports were significantly correlated. Excellent agreement was found for the group of subjects for self-monitoring reports of the number of drinking days and quantity of alcohol consumption per day, including reports of the temporal patterning of consumption, but variability in agreement existed across subject-collateral pairs. The discussion focuses on the conditions conductive to accurate measurement and on the importance of investigating predictor variables of individual differences in the accuracy of verbal reports of alcohol consumption.

Aged↗
PubMed1989

Predicting the drinking behavior of older adults from questionnaire measures of alcohol consumption.

The relationship between three questionnaire measures of alcohol consumption and self-monitoring reports of drinking in the natural environment was investigated in 83 normal drinkers over 60 years of age. Following questionnaire administration subjects recorded their alcohol consumption each day for up to three months. Collaterals verified subjects' self-monitoring reports. Questionnaire scores and self-monitoring reports of frequency and quantity of alcohol consumption were generally well correlated. Regression analyses showed the Questionnaire Measure of Habitual Alcohol Use to be the best predictor of both drinking frequency and quantity. Measurement issues related to the use of verbal reports of alcohol consumption with elderly drinkers are discussed.

Aged↗
PubMed1983

An information processing analysis of the effects of alcohol on perceptions of facial emotions.

Working from an information-processing conceptual framework, this experiment investigated the effects of alcohol, expectancy, and sex of subject on normal drinkers' perceptions of facial emotions. In a 2- x -2 factorial design, 24 males and 24 females were given either an alcoholic (0.50 g/kg body weight) or a nonalcoholic beverage and instructed that they were receiving either an alcoholic or a nonalcoholic beverage. The main dependent measure was subjects' ratings of affect contained in facial expressions. The hypothesis that alcohol consumption would impair affect perceptions received some support. Interaction effects also showed that greater alcohol-induced deficits occurred when subjects believed they had consumed alcohol and that the instructional variable differentially influenced the responses of males and females. With qualifications, these data suggest the utility of an information processing analysis of cognitive functions relevant to the social behavioral effects of alcohol consumption.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

The generality of the stimulus-binding hypothesis across drinking behavior and task performance in alcoholics.

This experiment investigated the validity of applying the stimulus-binding hypothesis of obesity to conceptualize drinking and task performance behaviors in alcoholics. Twenty alcoholics and 12 nonalcoholics participated in two counterbalanced experimental sessions. One session involved an assessment of subjects' voluntary consumption of preferred and nonpreferred nonalcoholic beverages. The other session involved their performance of four tasks that involved or manipulated the presence of salient external cues. The prediction of heightened externality in alcoholics was supported on the beverage consumption measures and was marginally supported on the task performance measures. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for models and treatments of alcohol problems.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

A comparison of alcoholics' and nonalcoholics' causal attributions for drinking behavior.

Alcoholic individuals often are assumed to deny personal responsibility for their alcoholism and to attribute causation to external situational factors. To investigate this assumption, in a 2 x 2 factorial design 20 alcoholics and 20 nonalcoholics made causal attributions for a recent personal drinking episode and for the audiotaped episode of a target individual who was described as either an alcoholic or a nonalcoholic. Results suggested that alcoholic subjects tended to make greater internal attributions for their own drinking than did nonalcoholic subjects. Subjects' attributions for the target individual depended on both the subjects' and targets' drinking histories. The results are discussed in terms of their relevance to models of alcoholism and to actor-observer differences in causal attributions.

Alcohol Drinking↗
PubMed1982

Alcohol's effects on human emotions: a review of the stimulation/depression hypothesis.

Recent hypotheses hold that acute alcohol consumption sequentially stimulates and then depresses (stimulation/depression) the drinker's emotional state as well as other physiological and non-mood-related behavioral functions. This paper traces the development of the stimulation/depression hypothesis as applied to human emotions and critically evaluates investigations of alcohol's acute emotional effects in order to assess its validity. Although some evidence suggests and elatant (i.e., stimulant) effect of alcohol at moderate intoxication levels, particularly on the rising limb of the blood alcohol curve, it is concluded that because of methodological inadequacies in the relevant experimental literature, the stimulation/depression hypothesis as applied to emotions remains largely untested. Conceptual and methodological refinements necessary for testing the hypothesis are discussed, and potentially important nonpharmacological factors that may also influence postconsumption mood changes are identified.

Affect↗