Alcohol-induced blackouts and other alcohol-related consequences as moderators of brief motivational intervention outcomes

Introduction: Heavy drinking among college students remains an issue within the United States. Past research has found that recent negative experiences with alcohol-related consequences, such as alcohol-induced blackouts, can serve as "teachable moments" and enhance the efficacy of personal feedback interventions (PFIs) in reducing future drinking behaviors (Miller et al., 2018b). Thus, the purpose of the current study was to better understand how the recent experience of an alcohol-induced blackout and other alcohol-related consequences influenced the relationship between receiving a PFI and future drinking behaviors assessed at follow-up.Method: Undergraduate students from two archival samples of heavy drinkers (N = 142 in one study, N = 157 in the second study) from a large, Southern Plains university completed studies assessing the effectiveness of a computer program called the Drinking Assessment and Feedback Tool for College Students (DrAFT-CS). Participants completed measures pertaining to drinks per week, recent experience of alcohol-related consequences and peak drinking episodes within the last month at both baseline and follow-up assessments.Results: Multiple hierarchical linear regression analyses revealed that the recent experience of an alcohol-induced blackout or of six other pertinent alcohol-related consequences (e.g., XX, XX) did not significantly moderate the relationship between receiving a PFI and future drinking behavior assessed at follow-up.Discussion: The current study demonstrated that the recent experience of certain alcohol-related consequences can increase the effectiveness of brief interventions in samples of college students who engage in heavy drinking. Future research should assess whether these same findings hold true for mandated samples, and it should continue to investigate whether heavy drinking college student samples evaluate alcohol-related consequences differently than average and light drinking samples

Infant physical knowledge

Physical reasoning is the ability to go beyond the information in the immediate perceptual array. For example, if I were to dangle my keys in front of me with the intention of letting go of them, everyone would predict that the moment I let go of the keys, they will fall towards the ground. Similarly, if I hide my keys behind my back, everyone has the expectation that the keys continue to exist and that the shape and size of the keys remain the same as they were before they were hidden from view. These two examples demonstrate that people share the same basic ideas about how objects behave and interact. These expectations may be universal across all humans, and they may even be shared by some other species. However, researchers are still puzzled by some aspects of these fundamental abilities. For instance, even though most people can effortlessly draw similar predictions about these events, we have yet to build a computer that can rival the physical reasoning abilities of a typically developing 1-year-old infant. In this chapter, we argue that one way to resolve some of the mysteries about physical reasoning is to look at the origins of the abilities and how they change over time. We start by reviewing the literature on the physical reasoning abilities of human infants. First, we present two case studies: knowledge about objects and knowledge about substances (e.g., liquid, sand, etc.). Each case begins by offering key distinctions that define physical reasoning abilities and then reviews the evidence that support these claims and how these findings provide information about the nature of the representation abilities. The final sections review how these findings relate to neuroscience, sociocultural, and policy perspectives