ALCOHOL AND THE ABILITY TO INHIBIT BEHAVIOR IN MEN AND WOMEN

Objective: This experiment tested the impairing effect of alcohol on c ognitive inhibitory control of behavior in the absence of any motivati onal consequences for exhibiting or inhibiting a response. Method: Men (n = 24) and women (n = 24) were trained on a computerized ''go-stop' ' task that measured response reaction time (RT) to a go signal and in hibitory control by the number of inhibitions to a randomly occurring stop signal. Equal numbers of men (n = 8) and women (n = 8) were assig ned to one of three groups (n = 16), and they performed the task alone in a room under either alcohol (A), placebo (P) or no-treatment contr ol (C) conditions. Blood alcohol concentrations of men and women were matched in Group A by administering 0.62 and 0.54 g/kg of alcohol, res pectively. Results: Alcohol impaired inhibitory control and had no sig nificant effect on response RT. Under P and C conditions, no changes i n inhibitions or response RT were observed. In addition, no significan t gender effects were found. Conclusions: The results showed that inhi bitory control of behavior was impaired by a moderate dose of alcohol that did not affect response RT.