KEY POINTS:
Young adults who binge-drink frequently are more likely to show disadvantageous decision-making patterns than their peers who don't drink as heavily, a study shows.
And the earlier a person begins to binge- drink, the stronger the tie to poor decision-making skills, Dr Anna E. Goudriaan and colleagues from the University of Missouri-Columbia report.
But the study wasn't able to demonstrate which came first, a bad approach to decision-making or a tendency to drink heavily.
Adolescence and early adulthood are times when many people drink heavily and a key period for making important life decisions, Dr Goudriaan and her team note in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.
To determine whether a person's drinking habits might be related to strategies for decision-making, the researchers asked 200 male and female college students to complete a test called the Iowa Gambling Task, a computer card game that involves trying to devise a winning approach by choosing cards from advantageous, rather than disadvantageous, decks.
Students had completed a questionnaire on their binge-drinking frequency once a year for four years, beginning with the summer before their first year at university.
Binge-drinking was defined as consuming five or more drinks in a single sitting.
They were divided into four groups based on drinking histories: one group had a low level of binge-drinking, meaning they reported binge-drinking once or not at all over the past 30 days; the second group binge-drank moderately; the third showed an increase in their tendency to binge-drink over the course of the study; and the fourth group binge-drank heavily throughout the study.
The young men and women in the chronic high binge-drinking group performed worse on the gambling task, on average, than those who drank less, and the earlier they had begun binge-drinking, the worse they fared.
Dr Goudriaan and her colleagues conclude: "Although a causal link has yet to be established, our findings indicate that binge- drinking at a younger age and prolonged binge-drinking are associated with worse decision-making."
- Reuters
