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Children's alcohol cognitions prior to drinking onset: discrepant patterns from implicit and explicit measures
Jeffrey G Noel1, Nicole Renick Thomson
1Missouri Institute of Mental Health, University of Missouri-St. Louis, St. Louis, MO 63139, USA. jeff.noel@mimh.edu
Summary
Children
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Adolescent Health
- Neuroscience
Background:
- Children often hold negative beliefs about alcohol before drinking onset, which can shift during adolescence.
- Traditional alcohol expectancy assessments capture conscious beliefs, not automatic evaluations.
- Understanding implicit alcohol associations is crucial for youth alcohol initiation research.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess implicit alcohol associations in children and younger adolescents.
- To examine the relationship between explicit and implicit alcohol expectancies.
- To clarify the role of automatic cognition in early alcohol use.
Main Methods:
- Eighty-nine 3rd/4th graders and 91 7th/8th graders completed explicit alcohol expectancy measures.
- Participants also completed two unipolar Implicit Association Tests (IATs) for positive and negative alcohol associations.
- The order of explicit versus implicit assessment was varied.
Main Results:
- Older children reported more positive and fewer negative alcohol outcomes explicitly.
- Implicit Association Tests revealed negative alcohol associations overall, with stronger negative scores in older children.
- Implicit associations were positive when IATs preceded explicit measures, indicating order effects.
Conclusions:
- Both explicit and implicit processes influence alcohol expectancies in youth.
- The order of assessment impacts the measurement of implicit alcohol associations.
- Findings inform interventions targeting automatic and controlled cognitive processes in preventing youth drinking.
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