Testing daily associations between impulsivity, affect, and alcohol outcomes: a pilot study

Abstract

Background: Considerable research has examined impulsivity between individuals, but less research has focused on whether impulsivity fluctuates within a person. Although previous research supports trait levels of impulsivity as a risk factor for increased alcohol involvement, it is unclear whether daily (i.e., state) fluctuations in impulsivity coincide with same-day drinking behaviors. The present pilot study tested (1) the extent to which impulsivity fluctuates within-person; (2) the influence of daily impulsivity on alcohol use outcomes across all days (i.e., whether drinking occurred, the number of drinks consumed, and intentions to drink) and on drinking days only (i.e., whether heavy episodic drinking occurred and the number of problems experienced); and (3) daily affect as moderators of these relationships. Method: Participants were 24 young adult drinkers without postsecondary education who completed a baseline plus 14 follow-up daily surveys. Each day, participants reported their impulsivity, affect, and drinking behavior. Results: Multilevel modeling revealed that 42.5% of the variability in daily impulsivity was due to within-person differences. Impulsivity was related to greater odds of heavy episodic drinking and more alcohol-related problems on drinking days. Positive affect moderated the relationship between impulsivity and alcohol-related problems, and the relationship between impulsivity and drinking intentions. Conclusions: Findings suggest that changes in positive affect and impulsivity may be a risk factor for alcohol problems in a daily context. Future research examining within-person impulsivity and negative outcomes may benefit from considering positive affect.

ADHD and Mental Health Symptoms in the Identification of Young Adults with Increased Risk of Alcohol Dependency in the General Population—The HUNT4 Population Study

“…Both our approach, as well as the approaches of Ahn and Vassileva [ 34 ] and Stamates, Linden-Carmichael, Preonas, and Lau-Barraco [ 11 ], should be included in future studies of craving and relapse in longitudinal and real-time studies of both non-treatment seeking and clinical populations, as well as in population-level risk triage. The prevailing approach is often to use screening tools such as the Alcohol Use Disorder identification test (AUDIT) or CAGE to identify subjects at risk.…”

“…Neurocognitive functions also need to be assessed as state dysfunctions indicated by high-frequency assessments in longitudinal designs through different forms of digital symptom mapping and phenotyping, in line with the research of Stamates et al [ 11 ]. Because within-subject variability in impulsivity indicates higher risk levels than between-subject variability, future multimodal and multilevel model approaches, paired with machine learning techniques, may enable us to analyse when the risk is expressed (state), rather than just who is at risk (trait).…”

“…Impulsivity has been conceptualized as a transdiagnostic marker of psychiatric symptoms in general and substance use specifically and it is likely that impulsivity moderates the effects of internalising symptoms on substance use [ 3 ]. In addition, within-person variability in impulsivity may increase the odds of both heavy drinking and alcohol-related problems [ 11 ]. Despite some bias towards clinical populations in the current research literature, several studies have also demonstrated significant relationships between impaired response inhibition or impulsivity and high-risk alcohol use in non-clinical populations [ 12 ].…”

Towards an affect intensity regulation hypothesis: Systematic review and meta-analyses of the relationship between affective states and alcohol consumption

“…An important debate in the literature concerns whether emotions ought to be conceptualised along dimensions of valence and arousal [ 40 , 41 ] or as discrete entities [ 42 , 43 ]. In the alcohol literature, the first approach, where researchers measure mood scores (e.g., PANAS, [ 38 ]) as an average of various adjectives related to either negative or positive emotions (e.g., [ 27 , 44 – 46 ]), has been more commonly utilised. Yet, an alternative approach, which adopts a discrete model of emotions, analyses each affect item individually.…”

A High-Sugar Diet Consumption, Metabolism and Health Impacts with a Focus on the Development of Substance Use Disorder: A Narrative Review

“…As shown in many clinical and preclinical studies, impulsivity is a vulnerability trait for SUD and a property of SUD [ 236 , 237 , 238 ]. Moreover, variability in impulsivity could increase the odds of both heavy drinking and alcohol-related problems [ 239 ], and a significant relationship between impaired response inhibition or impulsivity and high-risk alcohol use in nonclinical populations was demonstrated [ 240 ]. Bozkurt and colleagues [ 241 ] found that—among others—self-reported trait impulsivity predicted alcohol use severity in treatment-seeking patients [ 242 ].…”