EFFECTS OF ALCOHOL ON ROTARY PURSUIT PERFORMANCE - A GENDER COMPARISON

For 6 days, 10 male and 10 female social drinkers performed a rotary p ursuit task six times across each day under both placebo and alcohol-i ntoxicated conditions. Following a training period, 0.35g/kg of alcoho l or placebo beverages were administered 45 min before the second, thi rd, and fourth sessions each day. In general, alcohol impaired the rot ary pursuit performance of women more than that of men despite similar peak BAC levels. Results suggest no evidence of acute tolerance, evid enced by similar performance on the ascending and descending limbs of the BAC curve. However, results suggest that across the two alcohol ad ministration days, men tended to develop some tolerance to the deleter ious effect of alcohol on performance, whereas women became more sensi tive to the effect of alcohol on performance. These results indicate t hat there may be gender differences in the effects of repeated alcohol administration on motor performance.