Implicit and Explicit Alcohol-Related Cognitions

Abstract

This article presents the proceedings of a symposium at the 2001 RSA Meeting in Montreal, Canada organized by Reinout W. Wiers and Alan W. Stacy. The purpose of the symposium was to present recent applications of implicit cognitive processing theory to alcohol research. Basic cognitive research has demonstrated that implicit cognition influences memory and behavior without explicit recall or introspection. The presentations from this symposium show that implicit cognition approaches yield new insights into understanding drinking motivation. The presentations were: (1) An introduction by Alan W. Stacy; (2) Implicit cognition and alcohol use. Involvement of other variables? (Susan L. Ames); (3) Alcohol expectancies and the art of implicit priming (Jane A. Noll); (4) Parental alcoholism and the effects of alcohol on semantic priming (Michael A. Sayette); (5) Implicit arousal and explicit liking of alcohol in heavy drinkers (Reinout W. Wiers); and (6) Negative affective cues and associative cognition in problem drinkers (Martin Zack). Comments were provided by the discussant Marvin Krank. The presented studies demonstrated that: (1) implicit memories of alcohol associations are powerful predictors and cross-sectional correlates of alcohol use; (2) implicit retrieval processes influence alcohol outcome expectancies and alcohol consumption; (3) alcohol consumption influences implicit memory processing; (4) heavy drinkers reveal different affective responses in implicit and explicit tasks; and (5) negative affect exerts an implicit priming effect for alcohol associations in problem drinkers. These findings illustrate the importance of implicit cognition in understanding alcohol abuse and demonstrate the potential of the theoretical framework for more widespread application across a variety of areas of alcohol research, including diagnostics for the risk of alcohol abuse, treatment, and prevention.Key Words: Implicit Cognition, Implicit Association, Memory Association, Drinking Motivation, Implicit Priming, Alcohol, Expectancy. OVER THE PAST decades, implicit cognition has become an influential area in research in cognitive science. In alcohol research, the assessment of implicit cognitions began during the 1990s, with relatively few empirical applications. In basic research, implicit cognitions are contrasted with explicit cognitions such as deliberately recalled memories, beliefs, considerations, and other introspections. Implicit cognition influences one's memory and behavior without explicit recall or introspection. The presentations from this symposium show that implicit cognition approaches yield new insights in understanding drinking motivation. These data also show that, in at least in some instances, implicit and explicit processes can be differentiated. Because of its foundation in basic research, neurobiological plausibility, and growing empirical support in understanding alcohol abuse, implicit cognition is an important area for increased emphasis in alcohol research. Alan W. Stacy IMPLICIT COGNITION AND ALC...

Testing of a paper-and-pencil Personalized Single Category Implicit Association Test (SC-IAT-P)

“…With these traditional measures, scores obtained are often negative, independently of the subjects' smoking or alcohol dependence (Wiers & de Jong, 2006). These negative scores could therefore be interpreted as a manifestation of negative attitude toward these objects.…”

“…Thus, according to Olson and Fazio (2004), the test not only measures personal attitude: the valence of the attitude is contaminated by the "general opinion" (Wiers & de Jong, 2006) to the attitudinal object. For example, the negative score for the tobacco object can be interpreted as reflecting a collectively shared negative evaluation of tobacco.…”

Tendencias en el estudio de la cognición implícita relacionada con el alcohol

“…It has been suggested that the onset of alcohol would depend on the explicit process while the implicit process would play a more important role in the continued use ( Given that the number and variety of publications in the area is overwhelming, the purpose of this article is to review the scientific production on the topic by means of a bibliometric and content analysis of the empirical studies published up to May, 2013. Although there are interesting review papers about IAC, they are confined to a specific aspect of IAC, such as the indirect methods to asses IAC (Reich, Below & Goldman, 2010, Wiers & de Jong, 2006, the relationship between IAC and behavior (Rooke, Hine & Thorsteinsson, 2008), or the ways to modify IAC (Wiers, de Jong, Havermans & Jelicic, 2004). However, the present article aims to provide a global vision of the investigations about 705 Trends in the study of implicit alcohol related cognition / Biscarra, Conde, Carcelén IAC.…”

“…However, as Wiers & de Jong (2006) postulate, a central paradox of addiction is that addicted people continue consuming despite knowing the associated risks. In order to explain these irrational behaviors, during the 70s and 80s, several new theories proposed the existence of two processes underlying behavior: an explicit and controlled process and an implicit and automatic process (Chaiken, 1980;Devine, 1989;Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell & Kardes, 1986;Wason & Evans, 1975).…”

“…Although there are interesting review papers about IAC, they are confined to a specific aspect of IAC, such as the indirect methods to asses IAC (Reich, Below & Goldman, 2010, Wiers & de Jong, 2006, the relationship between IAC and behavior (Rooke, Hine & Thorsteinsson, 2008), or the ways to modify IAC (Wiers, de Jong, Havermans & Jelicic, 2004). However, the present article aims to provide a global vision of the investigations about IAC.…”