Reducing risk associated with college student drinking is a major public health concern. The free-pour assessment has the potential to inform interventions aimed at reducing risks associated with college student drinking. Yet, few studies have assessed conditions that influence pouring abilities, and no identified studies have assessed pouring behavior under the influence of alcohol. Participants trained to pour a standard drink of beer received a dose of alcohol (n = 7) or a placebo dose (n = 6) and repeated free-pours along the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) curve. Results suggested that participants were able to pour a standard drink of beer within the 10% training criterion range (12 oz) after a stimulus fading training procedure. Further, free-poured ounces were not subject to acute tolerance, as the majority of free-pours in the alcohol dose group (85.8% of pours) and the placebo dose group (83.3%) was within the training criteria. These data suggest that free-pouring a standard drink of beer is a trainable skill that persists despite a moderate dose of alcohol. Future studies should examine if skills training of other protective skills in the context of elevated BAC reduces the risks associated with intoxication among college students.

Objective: This investigation examined the impact of social networks on drinking reduction efforts following a brief alcohol intervention. In a reanalysis of data from an earlier randomized controlled trial with nonstudent emerging adult drinkers (Lau-Barraco et al., 2018), we aimed to test three domains of preintervention social network features as potential factors influencing intervention response: (a) general network characteristics (i.e., network size, network stability), (b) general network alcohol use (i.e., network alcohol abstainers, network heavy/problem drinkers), and (c) risky peers in network (i.e., proportion of drinking buddies, presence of drinking buddies identified as heavy/problem drinker). Method: Participants were 164 emerging adult heavy drinkers recruited from the community (65.9% men; mean age = 21.98 years; 56.2% ethnic minority). Participants were randomly assigned to either a brief personalized feedback intervention (PFI) or assessment-only control and provided data at 1-month and 3-month followups. Results: Greater network stability and greater representation of alcohol abstainers in one's social network were associated with improved initial postintervention response. Heavy/problem drinkers in the network did not moderate initial postintervention effects on drinking outcomes, but there was potentially a stronger intervention effect on risk reduction for those with higher proportions of drinking buddies in their network. Conclusions: Study findings provided evidence that a PFI was efficacious in mitigating some risky social network influence. However, findings did not support a consistent impact across all the network variables examined. Future research is needed to further clarify social network influences and how they may be targeted to enhance intervention efficacy. Public Health Significance StatementOur findings suggest that a brief alcohol intervention diminished some influence from risky social networks on alcohol consumption among emerging adult heavy drinkers from the community. This study contributed new knowledge regarding the impact of social network ties on behavior change in a vulnerable and understudied group of drinkers that will help guide the development of future interventions.

Multigroup latent profile analysis examined whether patterns of alcohol, cannabis, and tobacco use varied between college student and nonstudent young adults ( N = 745), and profiles were characterized by alcohol- and drug-related problems, psychological distress, and perceived stress. Findings supported three profiles (high use across substances, primarily high tobacco use, and low use across substances) among students. Students in the high use group, relative to other groups, experienced the highest number of problems and psychological distress. Among nonstudents, two profiles emerged (high use across substances and primarily high tobacco use), and noncollege participants in the high use group experienced the highest problems, psychological distress, and perceived stress. Students, compared to nonstudents, reported more variability in their substance use profiles, as a low substance use group was not observed among nonstudents. Prevention and intervention efforts should target nonstudents, which could aid in reducing negative health outcomes based on disparities in education.

Parent-child interaction therapy (PCIT) helps parents improve the quality of interaction with children who have behavior problems. The therapy trains parents to use effective dialogue acts when interacting with their children. Besides weekly coaching by therapists, the therapy relies on deliberate practice of skills by parents in their homes. We developed SpecialTime, a system that provides parents engaged in PCIT with automatic, real-time feedback on their dialogue act use. To do this, we first created a dataset of 6,022 parent dialogue acts, annotated by experts with dialogue act labels that therapists use to code parent speech. We then developed an algorithm that classifies the dialogue acts into 8 classes with an overall accuracy of 78%. To test the system in an actual clinical setting, we conducted a one month pilot study with four parents currently in therapy. The results suggest that automatic feedback on spoken dialogue acts is possible in PCIT, and that parents find the automatic feedback useful.