Impaired perceptual judgment at low blood alcohol concentrations
Introduction
Alcohol intoxication plays a role in one-third of injury-related deaths in females and almost half of them in males (Sjogren et al., 2006). Gender differences in cognitive impairment resulting from alcohol intoxication have been suggested to contribute to the different nature and frequency of accidents sustained (Ogden and Moskowitz, 2004). Females for instance, metabolize alcohol more quickly (Baraona et al., 2001, Frezza et al., 1990), show greater impairments in psychomotor performance (Dougherty et al., 1998, Fillmore and Vogel-Sprott, 1994) and have higher subjective ratings of their individual level of intoxication (Lundahl et al., 1997, Read et al., 2004). Intoxicated females have been found to display greater impairment on a short-term verbal memory task (Jones and Jones, 1976), a delayed recall task (Jones and Jones, 1977), and in the speed taken to access information from episodic memory (Haut et al., 1989). By contrast, intoxicated males have greater deficits in mental arithmetic and retrieving items from short-term memory (Hindmarch et al., 1991). In addition, intoxicated males display a greater reduction in cerebral glucose metabolism (Wang et al., 2003).
Most gender-based comparisons of alcohol-induced impairment have used a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08–0.12 g/100 mL, presumably because the legal limit for driving in the United Kingdom and in most of North America is 0.08 g/100 mL. It is not known whether gender differences persist at lower BACs, such as 0.05 g/100 mL, which is the legal maximum limit for driving in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and Australia. The present study aims to determine whether gender-based differences in alcohol-induced cognitive impairment can be detected at relatively low BACs. The paradigm involves a single time of alcohol administration and multiple-test sessions, using a short cognitive test. The use of a brief measure of cognition has enabled cognitive performance to be closely matched to BAC on both the ascending and descending limbs of the BAC curve.
The subtle cognitive impairment test (SCIT) (Yelland et al., 2004) is a computer-based, nonverbal, visuospatial discrimination task that assesses the speed and accuracy of perceptual judgments on briefly presented stimuli. It is believed that the requirements of the task mirror rapid perceptual judgments that might be made while driving. Although it shares some features with the inspection time (IT) task (Vickers et al., 1972) such as not being prone to practice effects, the SCIT has a quicker administration time (approximately 5 min duration compared with 25 min, and it provides measures of both error rate and response time; Friedman et al., 2006, Hutchison et al., 2006). The SCIT has not been used before to measure the effects of alcohol intoxication; however, the IT task has detected impairment in subjects with a BAC as low as 0.05 g/100 mL (Tzambazis and Stough, 2000). In the present study, the SCIT was used to compare the performance of males and females as they approach a target BAC of 0.05 g/100 mL and then recover.
Section snippets
Participants
Twenty-one participants (11 female, 10 male) aged between 18 and 27 years were recruited from the first year Psychology subject pool at Monash University, and participated for course credit. Participants were required to self-report whether they have normal or corrected-to-normal visual acuity, be considered “low-risk” alcohol consumers based on the appropriate national guidelines (NHMRC, 2001), have had no history of head injury requiring hospitalization, had no history of neurological disease
Results
BAC was examined at each of the five time points. For females, the peak average BAC was reached at the 80-min time point (0.052 g/100 mL), before declining at a constant rate until the final time point (see Fig. 3). The mean BAC for males showed a very similar pattern, peaking at 0.055 g/100 mL between the 35- and 80-min time points. BAC did not differ significantly as a function of gender at any recorded time point.
When subjects were tested on the SCIT 35 min after administration of alcohol, their
Discussion
The present study examined gender differences in perceptual judgment across time at low levels of alcohol intoxication. Both males and females displayed a trend toward slower responses and more errors, even when mildly intoxicated. Males made significantly (P < .01) more errors in the alcohol condition when compared with the control condition at the 35-, 80-, and 125-min time points, and during this period their mean BACs ranged between 0.046 and 0.055 g/100 mL.
Perceptual judgment, as measured by
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