ArticlePsychopharmacology2016
The effects of acute alcohol intoxication on the cognitive mechanisms underlying false facial recognition.
Article in Psychopharmacology, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 5 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
5 citing papers in PubMed, 31 citations in OpenAlex.
- Alcohol myopia and the distracting effects of hair in face recognition.Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England) · 2020Trial
- The impact of post-encoding alcohol consumption on episodic memory recall and remember-know responses in heavy drinkers.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
- A Longitudinal Examination of Alcohol-Related Blackouts as a Predictor of Changes in Learning, Memory, and Executive Function in Adolescents.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2022Article
- Do intoxicated witnesses produce poor facial composite images?Psychopharmacology · 2018Article
- The Effects of Alcohol Intoxication on Accuracy and the Confidence-Accuracy Relationship in Photographic Simultaneous Line-ups.Applied cognitive psychologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
rationaleFalse face recognition rates are sometimes higher when faces are learned while under the influence of alcohol. Alcohol myopia theory (AMT) proposes that acute alcohol intoxication during face learning causes people to attend to only the most salient features of a face, impairing the encoding of less salient facial features. Yet, there is currently no direct evidence to support this claim.
objectivesOur objective was to test whether acute alcohol intoxication impairs face learning by causing subjects to attend to a salient (i.e., distinctive) facial feature over other facial features, as per AMT.
methodsWe employed a balanced placebo design (N = 100). Subjects in the alcohol group were dosed to achieve a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.06 %, whereas the no alcohol group consumed tonic water. Alcohol expectancy was controlled. Subjects studied faces with or without a distinctive feature (e.g., scar, piercing). An old-new recognition test followed. Some of the test faces were "old" (i.e., previously studied), and some were "new" (i.e., not previously studied). We varied whether the new test faces had a previously studied distinctive feature versus other familiar characteristics.
resultsIntoxicated and sober recognition accuracy was comparable, but subjects in the alcohol group made more positive identifications overall compared to the no alcohol group.
conclusionsThe results are not in keeping with AMT. Rather, a more general cognitive mechanism appears to underlie false face recognition in intoxicated subjects. Specifically, acute alcohol intoxication during face learning results in more liberal choosing, perhaps because of an increased reliance on familiarity.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.