The effects of alcohol on preparation for expected and unexpected events

The present paper is concerned with investigating the effects of alcohol in situations where unexpected events occur and responses need to be cancelled and reprogrammed. One experiment is reported which involved the modification of an eight-choice reaction-time task, employing the priming procedures of Posner to investigate the effects of alcohol on decision times to expected and unexpected events. The experiment involved a series of valid pre-cues in which accurate information was provided about the up-coming response, and a series of invalid pre-cues in which the "wrong" information was given to subjects. The effects of alcohol (0.09% BAC) was significant on the invalid trials, in which reaction time slowed significantly and error rates increased significantly. The results are discussed in terms of response processing and attention-switching.