DIVIDED ATTENTION TASK-PERFORMANCE AND SUBJECTIVE EFFECTS FOLLOWING ALCOHOL AND PLACEBO - DIFFERENCES BETWEEN WOMEN WITH AND WITHOUT A FAMILY HISTORY OF ALCOHOLISM

Women with (FHP) and without (FHN) family histories of alcoholism rece ived either 0.56 g/kg alcohol or an isocaloric placebo in a repeated m easures group design. Subjects performed a divided attention task and gave subjective ratings of 12 alcohol effects over a 3-h interval. Aft er comparable doses of alcohol, 7 FHP and 10 FHN women had comparable ascending (blood alcohol levels) BALs. BALs peaked earlier for FHP wom en and then steadily declined. FHP women had a concomitant increase in visual search response times 30 min after alcohol. In contrast, score s on a simultaneously presented compensatory tracking task were virtua lly identical for the 7 FHP and 10 FHN women after alcohol and for the 8 FHP and 10 FHN women after placebo. After alcohol the FHP and FHN w omen had 7 out of 12 significantly different subjective ratings of alc ohol responses. FHP women had lower subjective responses to alcohol an d lower BALs, but their subjective responses were more strongly correl ated with BALs. Our findings for women studied in a group design confi rm the lower magnitude of subjective responses reported for pair-match ed FHP men following comparable doses of alcohol in within-subjects an d between-subjects designs in other laboratories.