Longitudinal cognitive control performance in binge drinkers measured via remote online assessment

Abstract

Background:Binge drinking – and the significantly amplified risk of injury and illness that accompany it – is a major public health problem in Australia and internationally. Compared to healthy controls, both binge and heavy drinkers are typified by impulsive decision-making and impaired cognitive control. The current study examined the reliability and validity of using online measures of cognitive control (Stop-signal Task, Delay Discounting Task) to identify deficits associated with binge drinking and tracking these effects longitudinally to examine their relationship to alcohol-related harms and changes in use behaviour.

Methods:One hundred and thirty-one participants (Mage=23.63, 67% female) completed measures of Alcohol use (AUDIT, AUQ, ASSIST, TLFB), cognitive control (stop-signal, DDT) and mood: anxiety (GAD-7), depression (PHQ-9), via web-based platform programmed in HTML (v5) and JavaScript. The mean duration between baseline and follow-up was 350 days (SD 202.2, range = 86-641 days)

Results:Binge (n= 43; AUQ_Binge Score 32.9, AUDIT 12.4) and non-binge drinker groups were determined using the binge drinking criteria from López‐Caneda et al., (2012). Overall, there was a significant decline in binge drinking over the period of observation (no moderation by group), for example the Binge groups’ AUQ-Binge (T1: 29.8, T2: 25.7) and AUDIT scores (T1: 12.4, T2: 9.3) both dropped significantly. A comparison of SSRT performance by group across time showed no significant main effect of group (p= .34) or time (p= .07) and no significant interaction effect (p= .55). DDT performance showed no group effect, but both time (p = .008) and interaction effects (p = .04) were significant, wherein binge drinkers’ discounting rate increased from T1 to T2.

Consistent with Paz et al. (2018) analysis approach to within participant change, participants with a positive or negative change in AUQ Binge score > 1 were compared, demonstrating a positive relationship between decreased binge drinking and improved cognitive control on both the SST and DDT.

Conclusion:Consistent with recent mixed findings from laboratory-based self-control tasks in community samples (Carbia et al., 2018), online versions of the Stop-signal and Delay Discounting tasks did not differentiate binge drinkers from a control group across two timepoints. The tasks, particularly the Delay Discounting Task, did show a level of within-participant sensitivity to change in binge drinking behavior, with decreases in bingeing resulting in improved cognition. Given the high level of test-retest reliability of the tasks (in control participants), increased frequency of testing and online real-time feedback may be opportunities to increase the sensitivity of our approach, particularly for the purposes of augmenting online interventions for binge drinking

Speakers

Presentation files

EP1415Rob Hester.pdf359.11 KBDownload

Type

Part of session