School of Psychology, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK.
J Psychopharmacol. 2014 Jan;28(1):31-8. doi: 10.1177/0269881113515060. Epub 2013 Dec 3.
Inhibitory mechanisms are thought to underpin the well-documented impairing effects of alcohol on attention. Here, we use a novel priming paradigm to investigate the effects of alcohol on inhibitory mechanisms in attention. Participants were assigned to an alcohol (N=15), or placebo (N=15) group. The dose of alcohol was 0.8 g/kg for males and 0.75 g/kg for females. Participants were asked to report figure reversals during presentation of the face-vase ambiguous figure. Prior to this, they were shown a prime that was either semantically relevant to the face-vase stimulus or was neutral. Semantic priming decreased the number of figure reversals in the first half of the test session in the placebo group but not in the alcohol group. The placebo group was also more likely than the alcohol group to report the first interpretation of the figure to be the same as the semantic prime. Prior presentation of a semantic prime had a stabilising effect on reversal rate, suggesting that the primed interpretation inhibited the alternate interpretation. The absence of an effect in the alcohol group is consistent with an alcohol-related impairment of this inhibition.
抑制机制被认为是酒精对注意力产生明显损害作用的基础。在这里，我们使用一种新颖的启动范式来研究酒精对注意力抑制机制的影响。参与者被分配到酒精组（N=15）或安慰剂组（N=15）。男性的酒精剂量为 0.8 克/千克，女性的酒精剂量为 0.75 克/千克。在呈现面孔花瓶歧义图形时，要求参与者报告图形反转。在此之前，他们会看到一个与面孔花瓶刺激物语义相关或中性的启动刺激。在安慰剂组中，语义启动会减少测试前半段的图形反转次数，但在酒精组中则不会。安慰剂组比酒精组更有可能报告图形的第一解释与语义启动相同。语义启动的预先呈现对反转率有稳定作用，表明启动的解释抑制了替代解释。酒精组没有效果，这与酒精相关的这种抑制作用受损一致。
