Alcohol and Human Memory (PLE: Memory)

Isabel Birnbaum, Elizabeth Parker

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317745631
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Originally published in 1977, the chapters in this volume offer a concise review of the research and new direction in the study of alcohol and cognition at the time. Each chapter has been prepared by an eminent researcher who was currently involved in investigating human cognitive behaviour. The chapters contain not just a dry summary of work done in the field, but descriptions of the impetus for the work that was done, problems in doing such work, knowledge that was gained, and suggestions for future research.

Many new approaches are presented for the study of alcohol and memory, and for the understanding of results of studies already done. This was a forward-looking volume not only about directions for future research, but with solid contributions that review and integrate major areas of inquiry on the influence of alcohol on memory and behaviour at the time.

Part I

INTRODUCTION

1

Alcohol Research: New Directions

Elizabeth S. Parker

National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

Isabel M. Birnbaum

University of California at Irvine

The chapters in this volume have been written by scientists who share a mutual concern with developing new directions for understanding alcohol’s effects on the fundamental cognitive process of memory. In recent years, research on learning and research on alcohol have advanced at a rapid rate, albeit somewhat independently. In the area of verbal learning, sophisticated theories and procedures have been developed to explain the workings of normal memory processes. With increasing recognition of the seriousness of the alcohol abuse problem, more and more scientists have found themselves challenged by research in this area. The following chapters illustrate some of the substantial benefits that can result from the application of experimental methods in verbal learning to research on alcohol. A synthesis between these fields is a mutually beneficial process. It both improves the quality of alcohol research and provides a fertile testing ground for theories of human memory.

The effects of alcohol on the central nervous system are associated with a wide repertoire of behavioral alterations. Evidence has emerged implicating alcohol consumption in a variety of deficits in human memory. In the chapters that follow, a full spectrum of alcohol-related amnesias is covered, and new approaches are described for studying and understanding human memory. Some of the highlights of the chapters and relevance to alcohol research are outlined below.

Theories and methods developed in the field of verbal learning offer rich potential for application to the study of alcohol and memory. Some of the theories and methods already have been applied to studies of cognitive deficits; others undoubtedly will be used in the future. For example, what are the similarities between alcohol-induced deficits in memory and changes in memory that are seen with aging? Can similar theories or models of information processing be fruitfully applied to the analysis of these deficits? How have the severe memory deficits seen in Korsakoff patients been analyzed and further understood within a “levels of processing” framework? Why are differences in the rate of acquisition of new information by normal individuals often followed by identical rates of forgetting? Can the theories used to explain these facts also be used to understand the impairment of learning often seen with alcohol intoxication? Models of information processing are proposed that separate memory into different, perhaps overlapping, phases, and suggestions are made for ways in which to detect the stages of memory most influenced by alcohol intoxication. Recent research on the mutual influence of internal events and external events on the perceived frequency of these events is described, and the relevance of this work to alcohol research is discussed. Is the detection of recurrence information – a remarkably sensitive process in normal individuals – or the differentiation between thoughts and external events influenced by alcohol intoxication? Some of the seemingly inappropriate behaviors resulting from intoxication could very well be related to confusions between what really happened and what was imagined to have happened. Are memories for internally and externally generated events equally affected by alcohol, or is one more sensitive to the effects of intoxication than the other? These and similar questions are discussed in the chapters that follow, and a bridge is built between somewhat disparate areas of inquiry. Questions of methodology that arise in one field are applied to another. The critical importance of the selection of the dependent variable is discussed, for example, and it is shown that widely different conclusions might be drawn on the basis of apparently similar measures of behavior. In another vein, the alcoholic blackout is simulated in the laboratory, and an accidental procedural difference is shown to have a powerful effect on the phenomenon under investigation. These discussions bring methodological considerations into sharp focus and will inevitably increase the sophistication of methods used in future studies of cognitive impairment.

Probably the most common type of alcohol-related memory loss occurs during acute intoxication. Although this passes unnoticed in most drinkers, experimental studies have shown that even moderate doses of alcohol in social drinkers produce measurable decrements in memory and learning capacities. These studies are described in the chapters that follow. What types of models can explain these losses? Does alcohol affect consolidation of the trace? Storage of new information? Retrieval? Do memory losses in much simpler organisms than humans have implications for the explanation of deficits that are found in humans? Just how acute memory deficits are related to other behavioral effects of alcohol on anxiety, aggression, motivation, and the dynamics of interpersonal interaction are questions yet to be addressed by research in the area of alcohol and memory. Although losses in information-processing capacities cannot be expected to account for all of alcohol’s acute effects, there is little doubt that decrements in this critical process have ramifications for other behavioral effects of alcohol. For example, is it possible that one of the rewarding aspects of drinking for certain people is an impairment in cognitive functioning? Might this impairment be related to a reduction in anxiety? As more refined approaches are used to study the effects of alcohol on memory, a greater clarification of alcohol’s global effects is bound to come about. In addition, there is a real need to specify the effects of alcohol at the behavioral level so that the biological bases of those effects can be more fully explored.

Interest in the phenomenon of state-dependent learning has increased in recent years, and new approaches in verbal learning have been applied to a number of problems that arise in this area. It generally has been agreed that state-dependent learning can be viewed as a type of context-specific learning: optimum recall of learned information should depend upon reinstatement of the original learning conditions. Alcohol and other drugs may produce contextual changes by altering the subject’s internal environment; these changes might lead to deficits when sober subjects try to recall information they learned while intoxicated or when intoxicated subjects try to recall information they learned in the sober state. The reasons for the frequent failure to find state dependency and the apparent unreliability of the phenomenon are discussed. Many questions are unanswered, whereas tentative answers have been given in some cases. Why is state dependency evident in some situations and not in others? Can state dependency be masked by other effects? What factors increase the likelihood that state dependency will be observed? Are specific conditions of storage or retrieval critical for the occurrence of state dependency? What are the implications of differences in degree of original learning in different states? State dependency is a particularly critical area of study, since there may be a relationship between the state-dependent effects of a drug and its abuse. It appears, for example, that drugs which produce state dependency also have a high liability of abuse. Whether this reflects the fact that both state dependency and abuse occur with centrally active drugs or whether there is a more direct causal relationship remains to be seen. The study of state dependency will be an area of major concern for years to come, and it is hoped that its coverage in this volume will increase not only the efficiency but also the value of future studies.

A number of memory disorders have been associated with the abuse of alcohol, among them the alcoholic blackout, disturbances in recent memory and abstracting ability in sober alcoholics, and the severe amnesia of Korsakoff’s syndrome. The nature and extent of these deficits are explored in several chapters, and provocative questions are raised. The alcoholic blackout is discussed, and important questions are addressed. For example: Is the blackout a defect in registration? Is it reversible? Is the alcoholic blackout preventable? Studies of chronic alcoholics raise further questions: Is a measurable memory deficit characteristic of only a small subset of chronic alcoholics? Are memory deficits limited to the early, postwithdrawal stage? Do the deficits depend upon other factors in combination with the chronic use of alcohol? The generalization that long-term alcoholics exhibit memory deficits is questioned, and suggestions are made for future research. In another series of studies, patients with Korsakoff’s syndrome served as subjects in the exploration of possible “processing” deficits in this syndrome. Here we see a theoretical framework that was developed to explain normal memory processes applied to increase our understanding of severe, chronic impairment of mnemonic functioning. Advances in research on cognitive deficits in alcoholic individuals will have beneficial spinoffs for understanding the development of alcoholism and for improving its treatment.

The preceding paragraphs serve merely to summarize some of the highlights of the conference on alcohol and human memory. No doubt the summary would be quite different if other participants were asked for their impressions. We found the conference to be a tremendously exciting and worthwhile experience, and our research has been substantially influenced by many of the issues brought out by the participants. We hope this volume will serve as a forum of ideas, questions, and directions for research on alcohol and memory. We look forward to an even greater collaboration between experimental psychologists in the area of learning and memory and investigators in the area of alcohol and behavior.

Part II

APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF ALCOHOL AND MEMORY

2

Similarities Between the Effects of Aging and Alcoholic Intoxication on Memory Performance, Construed Within a “Levels of Processing” Framework

Fergus I. M. Craik

University of Toronto

Three related topics are treated in this chapter. First, theoretical and empirical work concerned with a “levels of processing” view of memory is briefly described. Second, some of the findings in the field of adult age differences in human memory are reviewed, since there appear to be strong parallels between the effects of aging and of alcohol intoxication on memory performance. An attempt is made to show how notions deriving from the levels of processing approach can provide a heuristic framework for the further exploration and fuller understanding of the effects of aging and of alcohol on memory. Finally, some speculations are advanced on the causes underlying the effects on memory of divided attention, aging, and alcoholic intoxication.

A “LEVELS OF PROCESSING” VIEW OF MEMORY

Craik and Lockhart (1972) put forward some arguments against the currently popular view that human memory could most usefully be viewed as a series of stages or stores. Instead, they suggested (following such attention theorists as Treisman, 1964, and Sutherland, 1968) that incoming stimuli are analyzed to different levels or depths, depending on such factors as the amenability of the stimulus to deep processing, the nature of the task, and the amounts of time and attention that the subject could devote to processing the items. In this context “depth” refers to a continuum of processing running from shallow sensory analyses requiring little attention to deeper semantic processes through which the stimulus is identified, interpreted, and enriched by associations with stored knowledge. Craik and Lockhart argued that the memory trace may be considered the record of those analyses performed during perception and comprehension of the stimulus and that deeper processing resulted in longer lasting traces. According to this view, both the qualitative nature of the trace and its persistence over time depend entirely on those cognitive operations performed during initial processing of the event. It is implicit in the argument that no further processes, such as consolidation, are necessary for the long-term registration of the memory trace.

Other points made by Craik and Lockhart include the acknowledgment that the distinction between short-term and long-term memory, in some form, is a necessary one. They suggested that items in “primary memory” (Waugh & Norman, 1965) are those phenomenologically “in mind”; such items reflect continued attention devoted to the active analysis of the event’s mental representation. Once attention is diverted, information is lost from the trace at a rate that depends on its deepest level of analysis. Thus, short-term memory (or primary memory) is viewed as a process of continued activation rather than as a separate store. Finally, Craik and Lockhart urged that greater use be made of the incidental learning paradigm in memory research. The point here is that by specifying some operation to be performed on the item to be remembered, greater control is achieved over the subsequent mental operations than would be achieved by merely instructing subjects to “learn” or “remember” the item. The assumption is that real-life learning can be understood in terms of the mental operations performed during the learning period; further, that such operations can usefully be characterized as involving relatively shallow or deep levels of processing.

These notions were given some empirical substance by Craik and Tulving (1975). A typical experiment in this series involved presenting subjects with a different word on each of 60 trials. Before each word was presented, the subject was asked a question concerning either its structural characteristics (e.g., “Is the word in capital letters?”), its sound (e.g., “Does the word rhyme with DOOR?”), or its meaning (e.g., “Is the word a vegetable name?”). It was postulated that such questions necessitated progressively deeper analysis from structural to semantic questions and that a later memory test would thus show best retention of words associated with semantic questions and poorest retention of those associated with structural questions. This result was obtained in both recall and recognition and under both incidental and intentional learning instructions. Typical results are shown in Table 1. It also has been demonstrated that the superior retention of deeply processed words is not simply due to the longer decision times associated with semantic processing (Craik & Tulving, 1975); nor can the result be attributed to a failure to perceive the whole word in the shallow condition, since essentially the same pattern of results was obtained (a) when subjects wrote each word down at presentation and (b) the question was presented after the word was shown on each trial (Craik, 1977b).

TABLE 1
Proportions of Words Recognized Under Various Encoding Conditions^a

		Question type
	Case	Rhyme	Category
Positive responses	.23	.59	.81
Negative responses	.28	.33	.62

^aFrom Craik & Tulving, 1975, Exp. 9. (Copyright 1975 by the American Psychological Association. Reprinted by Permission.)

One unexpected feature of the results shown in Table 1 is the generally poorer retention of words associated with negative responses (i.e., words that are not in capital letters, do not rhyme, or do not fit the category). Also, it has been found consistently that the retention difference between positive and negative responses is greatest for deeply processed items. To account for these findings, Craik and Tulving suggested that retention is enhanced by greater degrees of elaboration of the trace – that is, by an increase in the richness and complexity of the cognitive operations performed. In addition, they suggested that such elaboration was particularly likely to occur when the remembered item and its encoding context could be integrated to form a coherent unit. Positive responses in the Craik and Tulving paradigm represent instances where the item and its context (the encoding question) can be so integrated. That is, for positive responses, context and item together form a coherent elaborated trace, whereas for negative responses the potential for integration and elaboration is much less marked.

In one study (Craik & Tulving, 1975, Experiment 7) elaboration was directly manipulated by varying the complexity of a sentence frame with one word missing; the subject’s task was to decide whether the word on each trial fitted into the frame on that trial. Figure 1 shows that in a later free-recall test, greater sentence complexity was associated with higher recall levels, but only for positive responses. Apparently, when the word and the sentence frame do not form a coherent unit (negative responses) the item does not benefit from greater trace elaboration. This pattern of results was amplified dramatically when the sentence frames were re-presented as cues. This manipulation had no effect on negative responses but boosted recall of positive responses, especially with more elaborate encodings. Thus, it may be concluded that for a retrieval cue to be effective, it m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• PART I: INTRODUCTION
• PART II: APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF ALCOHOL AND MEMORY
• PART III: MEMORY AND ALCOHOL INTOXICATION
• PART IV: ALCOHOL AND STATE DEPENDENCY
• PART V: MEMORY IN ALCOHOLICS AND KORSAKOFF PATIENTS
• Author Index
• Subject Index