Alcohol Expectancy Words Recalled at a Higher Rate by Heavy Drinkers

It is believed that an individual's alcohol expectancies, the anticipated effects of alcohol retained in memory, will differ in accordance with drinking experience. The focus of recent alcohol expectancy research has been on activation of alcohol expectancy memory networks for heavy drinkers, demonstrated through changes in behaviour following the presentation of implicit alcohol cues. Recent alcohol expectancy research has suggested that priming a memory test word list with an alcohol beverage word (Beer) acts as an environmental cue for heavy drinkers, resulting in greater recall of embedded alcohol expectancy words. Using a memory test designed to further explore the effectiveness of alcohol word cues, the current research tested 247 American exchange students recall of embedded word themes. The results suggest that the sequential presentation of alcohol expectancy words in itself, regardless of the first word (prime) of the tests, provides an adequate implicit cue initiating an expectancy word recall bias for heavy drinkers.