Low doses of alcohol may exert a differential effect on simple and complex working memory: A brief report on preliminary data

Authors

Ingrid Opperman*, Kate Cockcroft

Department of Psychology, School of Human and Community Development, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Abstract

This study evaluated the effects of a low dose of alcohol on verbal and visuospatial simple and complex working memory (WM) using preliminary data on a small sample. A repeated measures design was used to assess working memory in 16 young adult males, both before and after consuming 13.6 grams of alcohol. Breath alcohol concentrations (BAC) were measured prior to each subtest. Previous research has focused on higher doses of alcohol, cross-sectional comparisons, and theoretical conceptualizations of working memory, often resulting in the use of a single measure of complex visuospatial working memory. This study employed a comprehensive battery of 12 measures of simple and complex, verbal, and visuospatial working memory, with breath alcohol concentration as a covariate to directly investigate its effect. Repeated measures analyses of (co)variance models indicated some improvement on most of the complex working memory tasks, particularly in the verbal domain. In contrast, performance on the verbal and visuospatial simple working memory tasks either deteriorated or showed no improvement with alcohol. These preliminary findings indicate that alcohol may exert a differential effect on WM, which could be dependent on task type, perceptual modality, and breath alcohol concentration level. However, further data on larger samples is required to draw more definitive conclusions.

Keywords: alcohol, breath alcohol concentration, short-term memory, working memory

PAGES:235-254

doi:10.24193/cbb.2020.24.13

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