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Global impairment of prospective memory following acute alcohol

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Abstract

Rationale

Whilst the deleterious effects of alcohol on retrospective remembering have been widely documented, no study has yet objectively determined alcohol’s effects on prospective memory (PM)—remembering to do something in the future.

Objectives

With this aim, the present study determined the acute effects of alcohol upon PM using a laboratory measure that simulates the PM tasks in everyday life—‘Virtual Week’—both (a) in its standard form with regular, irregular, event-based and time-based PM tasks; and (b) an adapted version which enabled exploration of how future event simulation at encoding impacted upon subsequent PM.

Methods

Forty healthy volunteers were administered 0.6 g/kg ethanol or a matched placebo in a double-blind fashion and completed the two versions of Virtual Week along with prose recall (to tap retrospective memory) and an executive function task.

Results

Alcohol acutely produced global impairments across all (regular, irregular, event-based and time-based) PM tasks. It also produced impairments of episodic memory which positively correlated with PM performance of irregular tasks. Future-event simulation tended to enhance PM in the placebo but not in the alcohol group.

Conclusions

These findings on an objective measure of PM suggest that 4–5 units of alcohol will compromise PM abilities in everyday life.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are very grateful to Prof. Dora Duka for her helpful discussions regarding the alcohol administration procedure used in this study. We acknowledge the help of Trevor Daniels in programming Virtual Week. This study was funded by a research grant to HVC and CJAM from the Alcohol Education and Research Council (AERC) and a research grant to PGR from the Australian Research Grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, Clinical Psychology, University College London, Gower St., London, WC1E 6BT, UK

    Julie R. Leitz, Celia J. A. Morgan, James A. Bisby & H. Valerie Curran

  2. School of Psychology, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Australia

    Peter G. Rendell

Authors
  1. Julie R. Leitz
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  2. Celia J. A. Morgan
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  3. James A. Bisby
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  4. Peter G. Rendell
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  5. H. Valerie Curran
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Correspondence to Julie R. Leitz.

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Leitz, J.R., Morgan, C.J.A., Bisby, J.A. et al. Global impairment of prospective memory following acute alcohol. Psychopharmacology 205, 379–387 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-009-1546-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00213-009-1546-z

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