The image-based alcohol-action implicit association test

Previous work has shown that automatic alcohol-action associations, assessed by the Implicit Association Test (IAT), may play a role in hazardous drinking patterns. The majority of alcohol-related IATs have been constructed using verbal stimuli, and even those who have used pictorial stimuli have only represented beverage categories with pictures. To assess implicit appetitive responses among a broader population of alcohol users, such as those who experience limitations reading and understanding English, there may be utility in the development of an IAT that utilizes only non-verbal stimuli.

The current study presents an initial effort to develop such a task and examine its association with drinking. One hundred and fifty-three university students participated individually in a laboratory study in which they first completed a pictorial alcohol-specific approach/avoid IAT, followed by self-report measures of drinking.

As hypothesized, negative binomial regression analyses showed that IAT scores predicted the number of heavy drinking episodes and typical number of drinks per occasion.

The use of a university student sample for this initial study represents an important limitation of this work, which should be addressed in future research.

These findings provide initial evidence for the potential use of non-verbal IATs to assess alcohol-related implicit cognition among adults. Implications for the assessment of hazardous drinking behavior across populations are discussed.