Study Evaluates The Impact Of Childhood Temperament On Later Alcohol Use/Problems

Main Category: Alcohol / Addiction / Illegal Drugs
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 12 Jul 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Study Evaluates The Impact Of Childhood Temperament On Later Alcohol Use/Problems

Most risk and protective factors for alcohol use have roots in early childhood. In other words, an individual enters adolescence with personality characteristics and life experiences that have accumulated during the first decade of life. An evaluation of measures of temperament from children six months through to five years of age has found that childhood temperament prior to age five predicts adolescent alcohol use and problems at age 15.5 years, even after controlling for socio-demographic factors and parental alcohol problems.

Results will be published in the December 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

"Most scientists who study alcohol use start studying people in adolescence, since that is when alcohol use is usually first initiated/experimented with," explained Danielle Dick, associate professor of psychiatry, psychology and human and molecular genetics with the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as corresponding author for the study. "But people don't enter adolescence as blank slates; they have a history of life experiences that they bring with them, dating back to early childhood. This is one of the most comprehensive attempts to understand very early childhood predictors of adolescent alcohol use in a large epidemiological cohort."

"A question largely unanswered by the existing literature concerns the origins of personality differences in adolescents or adults who do and do not have drinking problems," added Matt McGue, Regents Professor in the department of psychology at the University of Minnesota. "In my opinion, the major contribution of the current study is that it shows that these personality differences emerge very early in life."

Dick and her colleagues used data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a large epidemiological sample of pregnant women with delivery dates between April 1991 and December 1992. The children (6,504 boys, 6,143 girls) were followed longitudinally. Temperamental characteristics were assessed at six time points from six to 69 months of age. Alcohol use and problems were assessed at age 15.5 years.

"Some of the most interesting findings to emerge from this study are that, one, we can identify childhood temperamental styles that emerge prior to age five that predict alcohol use and problems in mid-adolescence," said Dick. "Two, the early childhood temperamental styles that predict alcohol use are very different and largely uncorrelated - that both kids who show consistent emotional and behavioral problems early on are at elevated risk and kids who are consistently sociable at a very early age are also at risk. This indicates very different pathways to alcohol involvement/patterns, that emerge early on, which has important implications for prevention efforts."

"Temperament is considered to represent the biological foundations of later personality and is manifested in terms of basic reactivity and regulatory process," said McGue. "This study differs from other studies in two significant ways. First, other studies have typically focused on personality, which is normally assessed by self-report. This study indicates that those personality factors are the result, in part, of early temperamental expressions. Second, ALSPAC is a large and very well characterized longitudinal study. This allows the investigators to rigorously evaluate their hypothesis as well as provide them with the statistical power they need to explore important ancillary questions, such as whether the nature of personality risk differs in males and females, a gender effect they did not find in this study."

"Interestingly, the association between sociability and alcohol use/problems was more significant than the association found between emotional and conduct difficulties and later alcohol problems, said Dick. "This underscores the fact that drinking during adolescence is largely a social phenomenon. However, this doesn't mean it's less problematic; we know from other studies that most adolescent drinking is high risk - for example, binge drinking - and can lead to numerous negative consequences."

Both Dick and McGue noted the importance of searching for what may lead to adolescent drinking when trying to understand the development of patterns of alcohol use, such as predictors that emerge very early in life.

"That said," noted McGue, "while I think the most important finding concerns tracing personality differences back to preschool differences in temperament, we cannot, from these findings, predict with much accuracy which preschoolers will have problems with alcohol as adolescents and which will not." McGue spoke favorably of unrelated Canadian research that targets personality risk factors for substance abuse; rather than trying to change the personalities of adolescents, scientists are attempting to teach them how to deal with their personalities.

"All things considered," said Dick, "it's not just 'problem kids' who get involved in alcohol use. It's also the highly sociable kids as well. Parents should be aware of this."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our alcohol / addiction / illegal drugs section for the latest news on this subject. Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

University, Virginia Commonwealth. "Study Evaluates The Impact Of Childhood Temperament On Later Alcohol Use/Problems." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 12 Jul. 2013. Web.
12 Jul. 2013. APA

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'Study Evaluates The Impact Of Childhood Temperament On Later Alcohol Use/Problems'

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Study Evaluates The Impact Of Childhood Temperament On Later Alcohol Use/Problems

Main Category: Alcohol / Addiction / Illegal Drugs
Also Included In: Pediatrics / Children's Health;  Psychology / Psychiatry
Article Date: 12 Jul 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Study Evaluates The Impact Of Childhood Temperament On Later Alcohol Use/Problems

Most risk and protective factors for alcohol use have roots in early childhood. In other words, an individual enters adolescence with personality characteristics and life experiences that have accumulated during the first decade of life. An evaluation of measures of temperament from children six months through to five years of age has found that childhood temperament prior to age five predicts adolescent alcohol use and problems at age 15.5 years, even after controlling for socio-demographic factors and parental alcohol problems.

Results will be published in the December 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

"Most scientists who study alcohol use start studying people in adolescence, since that is when alcohol use is usually first initiated/experimented with," explained Danielle Dick, associate professor of psychiatry, psychology and human and molecular genetics with the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as corresponding author for the study. "But people don't enter adolescence as blank slates; they have a history of life experiences that they bring with them, dating back to early childhood. This is one of the most comprehensive attempts to understand very early childhood predictors of adolescent alcohol use in a large epidemiological cohort."

"A question largely unanswered by the existing literature concerns the origins of personality differences in adolescents or adults who do and do not have drinking problems," added Matt McGue, Regents Professor in the department of psychology at the University of Minnesota. "In my opinion, the major contribution of the current study is that it shows that these personality differences emerge very early in life."

Dick and her colleagues used data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC), a large epidemiological sample of pregnant women with delivery dates between April 1991 and December 1992. The children (6,504 boys, 6,143 girls) were followed longitudinally. Temperamental characteristics were assessed at six time points from six to 69 months of age. Alcohol use and problems were assessed at age 15.5 years.

"Some of the most interesting findings to emerge from this study are that, one, we can identify childhood temperamental styles that emerge prior to age five that predict alcohol use and problems in mid-adolescence," said Dick. "Two, the early childhood temperamental styles that predict alcohol use are very different and largely uncorrelated - that both kids who show consistent emotional and behavioral problems early on are at elevated risk and kids who are consistently sociable at a very early age are also at risk. This indicates very different pathways to alcohol involvement/patterns, that emerge early on, which has important implications for prevention efforts."

"Temperament is considered to represent the biological foundations of later personality and is manifested in terms of basic reactivity and regulatory process," said McGue. "This study differs from other studies in two significant ways. First, other studies have typically focused on personality, which is normally assessed by self-report. This study indicates that those personality factors are the result, in part, of early temperamental expressions. Second, ALSPAC is a large and very well characterized longitudinal study. This allows the investigators to rigorously evaluate their hypothesis as well as provide them with the statistical power they need to explore important ancillary questions, such as whether the nature of personality risk differs in males and females, a gender effect they did not find in this study."

"Interestingly, the association between sociability and alcohol use/problems was more significant than the association found between emotional and conduct difficulties and later alcohol problems, said Dick. "This underscores the fact that drinking during adolescence is largely a social phenomenon. However, this doesn't mean it's less problematic; we know from other studies that most adolescent drinking is high risk - for example, binge drinking - and can lead to numerous negative consequences."

Both Dick and McGue noted the importance of searching for what may lead to adolescent drinking when trying to understand the development of patterns of alcohol use, such as predictors that emerge very early in life.

"That said," noted McGue, "while I think the most important finding concerns tracing personality differences back to preschool differences in temperament, we cannot, from these findings, predict with much accuracy which preschoolers will have problems with alcohol as adolescents and which will not." McGue spoke favorably of unrelated Canadian research that targets personality risk factors for substance abuse; rather than trying to change the personalities of adolescents, scientists are attempting to teach them how to deal with their personalities.

"All things considered," said Dick, "it's not just 'problem kids' who get involved in alcohol use. It's also the highly sociable kids as well. Parents should be aware of this."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our alcohol / addiction / illegal drugs section for the latest news on this subject. Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

University, Virginia Commonwealth. "Study Evaluates The Impact Of Childhood Temperament On Later Alcohol Use/Problems." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 12 Jul. 2013. Web.
12 Jul. 2013. APA

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Study Evaluates The Impact Of Childhood Temperament On Later Alcohol Use/Problems'

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View the original article here

Labels Of Intoxication Like 'Wasted' And 'Hammered' Versus 'Buzzed' And 'Tipsy' May Impact Perceptions And Subsequent Behaviors

Main Category: Alcohol / Addiction / Illegal Drugs
Article Date: 12 Jul 2013 - 1:00 PDT Current ratings for:
Labels Of Intoxication Like 'Wasted' And 'Hammered' Versus 'Buzzed' And 'Tipsy' May Impact Perceptions And Subsequent Behaviors

Understanding the natural language that drinkers use to describe intoxicated states can provide critical insight into subjective perceptions of intoxicated states, particularly among specific groups such as college students. This study extends previous research by assessing how college students apply intoxication terms to characters in hypothetical situations, finding that the ways in which the two genders perceive and communicate intoxicated states may help tailor unique measures for prevention and intervention.

Results will be published in the December 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

"Drinkers use a complex set of physical and cognitive indicators to estimate intoxication," said Ash Levitt, a research scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. "In order to quickly and easily communicate various levels of intoxication, drinkers distill these indicators down into distinct sets of natural language terms for intoxication, such as 'tipsy' or 'wasted.' Understanding this language is important as these terms reflect levels of intoxication as well as whether individuals are accurately estimating intoxication levels when they use these terms."

Levitt's previous research examined how individuals use natural language intoxication terms to describe themselves. "We found that self-use of terms differed for moderate versus heavy intoxication levels, and that women tended to use moderate terms, whereas men used heavy terms. The current study extends this previous work."

"The study of natural language labels used to describe alcohol's effects hasn't received much attention to date," added Mark Wood, a professor of psychology at the University of Rhode Island. "Broadly speaking, there is a long history of research in psychology, particularly social psychology, examining the way that labels applied to behaviors can impact perceptions and subsequent behaviors. This study's key findings - that men's drinking, regardless of whether it is moderate or heavy, is described using terms indicative of excessive consumption such as 'wasted' or 'hammered,' while women tend to couch drinking in more moderate terms such as 'buzzed' or 'tipsy' - corresponds with the way that 'drinking men' and 'drinking women' are differentially perceived. As such, these findings have clear implications for prevention and intervention work with men and women."

As part of a larger online study on the natural language of intoxication, Levitt and his colleagues had 145 undergraduate students from a large Midwestern university participate in a survey during the spring semester of 2007 in return for partial course credit. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of eight vignette conditions in their survey; the number of participants in each cell ranged from 16 to19, with gender being roughly equal within each cell.

"The current study showed that natural language intoxication terms are applied to others similarly to oneself," said Levitt. "Specifically, results supported previous research by showing that moderate intoxication terms such as 'tipsy' were applied to female vignette characters more than male characters, even when female characters were heavily intoxicated, and that female participants applied these terms more than male participants. In contrast, heavy intoxication terms such as 'wasted' were applied to male vignette characters more than female characters, and male participants applied these terms more than female participants."

"An important next step for research would be to see whether the inaccuracies in describing intoxication can predict alcohol-related consequences for men and women," said Wood. "Clinicians could use this knowledge to work with men to help correct the notions that being 'hammered' is both typical and acceptable, and with women to increase awareness about the potential dangers of underestimating their own or others' degree of intoxication. It would also be interesting to more directly investigate how natural language labels are connected to judgments of men and women described with heavy and moderate intoxication labels."

"One potential real-world implication that this research suggests is that women may be at increased risk for alcohol-related consequences such as drunk driving if they or their friends underestimate how intoxicated they are by using moderate terms like 'tipsy' to describe them when, in fact, they are heavily intoxicated and heavy terms would be more accurate," added Levitt.

Wood concurred. "Another consequence of underestimating impairment could lead to sexual victimization," he said. "One example of this might be not recognizing a risky situation or overestimating the ability to manage it, such as recognizing and avoiding sexual assault. The finding that women tend to avoid natural language labels that indicate excessive consumption indicates awareness of a gender-based double standard in which drinking women, and perhaps especially drunk women, are judged more harshly than men. Other research has found that when a woman was drinking moderately - versus drinking soda - on a first date, participants indicated that there was a significantly greater likelihood that the date would end with sex, that the woman was more promiscuous in general, but was rated less favorable in terms of both social appeal and overall impressions."

Wood added that the findings also suggest that the "natural language" men use to describe their own and other men's drinking may promote hazardous beliefs. "These beliefs normalized heavy drinking as both what most men actually do and what they ought or should do," he said. "These beliefs, known in the scientific literature as descriptive and injunctive norms, have been found to influence heavy drinking and alcohol problems, particularly among younger drinkers like college students. They also provide a potential excuse for typically unacceptable behaviors as something that is normative, acceptable, and even fun. Essentially, in an instance like this, intoxication provides a 'cultural timeout' from regulating one's behavior."

Article adapted by Medical News Today from original press release. Click 'references' tab above for source.
Visit our alcohol / addiction / illegal drugs section for the latest news on this subject. Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report:

MLA

University at Buffalo, SUNY. "Labels Of Intoxication Like 'Wasted' And 'Hammered' Versus 'Buzzed' And 'Tipsy' May Impact Perceptions And Subsequent Behaviors." Medical News Today. MediLexicon, Intl., 12 Jul. 2013. Web.
12 Jul. 2013. APA
University at Buffalo, SUNY. (2013, July 12). "Labels Of Intoxication Like 'Wasted' And 'Hammered' Versus 'Buzzed' And 'Tipsy' May Impact Perceptions And Subsequent Behaviors." Medical News Today. Retrieved from
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/263191.php.

Please note: If no author information is provided, the source is cited instead.

'Labels Of Intoxication Like 'Wasted' And 'Hammered' Versus 'Buzzed' And 'Tipsy' May Impact Perceptions And Subsequent Behaviors'

Please note that we publish your name, but we do not publish your email address. It is only used to let you know when your message is published. We do not use it for any other purpose. Please see our privacy policy for more information.

If you write about specific medications or operations, please do not name health care professionals by name.

All opinions are moderated before being included (to stop spam)

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Please send any medical news or health news press releases to:

Note: Any medical information published on this website is not intended as a substitute for informed medical advice and you should not take any action before consulting with a health care professional. For more information, please read our terms and conditions.

View the original article here