Influences of alcohol upon performance and performance awareness

The effects of alcohol and performance feedback on reaction time, judgments of response speed, and awareness of performance were examined with 15 male subjects. It was suggested that the dose of alcohol which impaired performance would also reduce the awareness of the impairment. In response to extrafoveal visual signals, a series of RTs and response-speed judgments were recorded over three experimental sessions which differed in target blood alcohol concentration, i.e., placebo, .05, .10. The spurious performance feedback presented to five subjects in each of three groups represented either fast, average, or slow RTs. Data support the hypothesis that alcohol impairs both performance and performance awareness. In all groups alcohol significantly increased RTs and significantly impaired the accuracy of response speed judgments. The measures of awareness, i.e., correlations between RTs and response speed judgments, showed that alcohol and spurious feedback significantly impaired performance awareness.