Ostafin Brian D, Kassman Kyle T, de Jong Peter J, van Hemel-Ruiter Madelon E
Department of Psychology, University of Groningen, 9716 KC Groningen, The Netherlands.
Department of Psychology, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND 58202, USA.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2014 Aug 1;141:149-52. doi: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2014.04.023. Epub 2014 May 13.
A defining feature of alcohol addiction is dyscontrol - drinking despite intentions to restrain use. Given that dyscontrolled drinking involves an automatic (nonvolitional) element and that implicit measures are designed to assess automatic processes, it follows that implicit measures may be particularly useful for predicting dyscontrolled alcohol use. Although there is accumulating evidence for the benefit of using implicit measures to predict nonvolitional behaviors, relatively little research has examined such predictive validity for alcohol dyscontrol. The current study was designed to examine whether an implicit measure of alcohol attitude would predict variance of dyscontrol above that explained by typical drinking behavior and an explicit measure of alcohol attitude.
A sample of 62 undergraduate students completed implicit and explicit measures of alcohol-positive (relative to alcohol-negative) valence associations and retrospective self-report measures of typical drinking behavior and difficulty in controlling alcohol consumption.
Both the implicit and explicit measures predicted alcohol dyscontrol. The implicit measure continued to predict dyscontrol when controlling for the explicit measure and typical drinking behavior.
These findings indicate that assessing the automaticity of alcohol-positive associations may be beneficial for predicting clinically relevant behaviors such as post-treatment outcome.
酒精成瘾的一个决定性特征是失控——尽管有意限制饮酒，但仍会饮酒。鉴于失控饮酒涉及自动（非自愿）因素，且内隐测量旨在评估自动过程，因此内隐测量可能对预测失控饮酒特别有用。尽管越来越多的证据表明使用内隐测量来预测非自愿行为有好处，但相对较少的研究考察了这种预测效度在酒精失控方面的情况。当前研究旨在检验酒精态度的内隐测量是否能预测失控的方差，该方差超出了典型饮酒行为和酒精态度的外显测量所解释的范围。
62名本科生样本完成了酒精积极（相对于酒精消极）效价关联的内隐和外显测量，以及典型饮酒行为和控制饮酒困难的回顾性自我报告测量。
内隐和外显测量均能预测酒精失控。在控制外显测量和典型饮酒行为时，内隐测量仍能预测失控。
这些发现表明，评估酒精积极关联的自动性可能有助于预测诸如治疗后结果等临床相关行为。
