{"id":68,"date":"2013-03-26T18:20:36","date_gmt":"2013-03-26T22:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/?p=68"},"modified":"2017-06-27T14:58:34","modified_gmt":"2017-06-27T18:58:34","slug":"binge-drinking-before-an-exam-maybe-not-as-bad-as-you-thought","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/2013\/03\/26\/binge-drinking-before-an-exam-maybe-not-as-bad-as-you-thought\/","title":{"rendered":"Binge Drinking Before an Exam, Maybe Not as Bad as You Thought."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"binge<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s no secret that in the pursuit of a higher education away from the confines of home students often explore a wilder side of themselves. The weekdays may be all about academics, but on the weekend campuses breakout with parties full of stressed students trying to let loose, if only for one night. This celebration of the weekend usually includes some alcoholic drinking. Four out of every five college students drink alcohol. Strict scheduling of academics and fun can lead students to overindulge, taking in too much of a good thing in a short period of time. In terms of drinking this pattern of behavior is called binge drinking. About half of all college students who drink also show patterns of binge drinking. 54% of binge drinking college students reported blacking out and forgetting what they had done some point in the past year, compared to only 25% for students who did not binge drink. Binge drinking as defined by the National Advisory Council of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) is attaining a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.08 g% or more in about two hours. 0.08 g% is equivalent to about 5 or more drinks for most adults (4 or more for females). A BAC of 0.08 is considered intoxicated and is associated with impairment of speech, balance, reaction time, judgment, and memory. Though, because this impairment is often slight and just beginning to develop, it may be easy to believe you are less impaired than you are. Drinking 5 or more drinks in only 2 hours clearly shows its effects the night of their intake, but what about the next day? Worst, what if a student has academic responsibilities the next day? Even worst, what if the student has an exam the next day!<\/p>\n

Howland et al. in a 2010 study researched how binge drinking may affect next day exam scores. Howland and his colleagues wanted to see how a night of binge drinking would affect performance on an academic test the next morning when blood alcohol level had returned to zero. In addition to academic test-taking performance participants were asked by Howland et al. to preform test of cognitive abilities and rate their moods the next day. To test this Howland had people come into a laboratory setting and asked them to watch a half hour video lecture and read an accompanying textbook chapter. Participants knew they would be tested on the material the next day. The participants were then given drinks, however they had no idea if their drink was true alcohol or non-alcoholic beer substitute. The drinking period lasted a little over an hour and participants\u2019 breath was tested until they had reached a specified breath alcohol concentration (0.12 g%) if they were in the alcoholic drink group. The next morning participants\u00a0were given a multiple choice quiz on the lecture from the night before and two parts (verbal and math) of the Graduate Record Examinations (GREs) general multiple choice test (note BAC was now back to 0 when taking tests). After this participants took a battery of cognitive test requiring speed and sustained attention\/reaction time. Finally participants rated their mood in the morning and again in the afternoon the day after drinking. A week later the same participants came back in to the lab and the alcoholic and non-alcoholic groups were switched (those given alcohol last week, now given non-alcoholic drink and vice versa) and then took all the same test again to have something to compare their performance from the first week against.<\/p>\n

The results of this study were quite surprising. The participants\u2019 academic test-taking abilities were NOT affected in a significant way. Both those who drank alcohol and those who did not did equally well on the multiple choice GRE and quiz on the video lecture\/ book chapter. Both groups got moderate scores (80\u2019s range), with the mean correct right out of 30 questions of the lecture\/book quiz being 24.70 for alcohol and 24.59 for non-alcoholic participants. A similar pattern was found in the means for the verbal and quantitative GRE sections. However, cognitive abilities were affected. Those in the binge drinking group did worst in the cognitive test requiring attention, quick reaction times, motor functions, and spatial reasoning. These skills are essential for activities like driving. Those in the binge-drinking group also reported a worst mood in the morning and afternoon after the night of drinking. BAC had returned to zero and therefore participants were now sober. Even so, the effects of alcohol still persisted.<\/p>\n

Although the binge drinking didn\u2019t affect performance on the multiple choice academic tests given in this study, performance on a more complex test could be affected. This includes essay writing and higher-level problem solving. Also, even if performance on an exam is unaffected, you\u2019ll feel horrible while taking the exam as indicated by the mood rating done in the study. Plus this study isolated the affects of binge drinking on test taking alone, not accounting how drinking may prevent studying for the exam in the first place, disturb sleeping patterns and lower class attendance. Overall, it is clear binge drinking will affect cognitive abilities not only on the night of drinking, but the next day as well as shown by the results of this study. Statistically, students who regularly have more than 5 drinks per occasion have a GPA half a grade lower than other students. No student wants to have his\/her grades affected by foolish mistakes they made the night before. To ensure all your cognitive abilities are sharp for test day please hold off on the celebration.<\/p>\n

References:<\/p>\n

Howland, J., Rohsenow, D. J., Greece, J. A., Littlefield, C. A., Almeida, A., Heeren, T., Winter, M., Bliss, C. A., Hunt, S., & Hermos, J. (2010). The effects of binge drinking on college students\u2019 next-day academic test-taking performance and mood state. Addiction, 105,<\/i> 655-665. doi:10.1111\/j.1360-0443.2009.02880.x<\/p>\n

College Drinking. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). <\/i>Retrieved April 10, 2013, from http:\/\/www.niaaa.nih.gov\/alcohol-health\/special-populations-co-occurring-disorders\/college-drinking<\/a><\/p>\n

(1999,January 22). Effects At Specific B.A.C. Levels. B.R.A.D. Be Responsible About Drinking. <\/i>Retrieved April 10, 2013, from http:\/\/www.brad21.org\/effects_at_specific_bac.html<\/a><\/p>\n

(2007, August 15). College and Drinking. Education Portal. <\/i>Retrieved April 10,2013, from http:\/\/education-portal.com\/articles\/College_and_Drinking.html<\/a><\/p>\n

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click here for a pdf. of the complete article<\/a><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s no secret that in the pursuit of a higher education away from the confines of home students often explore a wilder side of themselves. The weekdays may be all about academics, but on the weekend campuses breakout with parties full of stressed students trying to let loose, if only for one night. This celebration […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4205,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[60348,80215],"tags":[130389,212],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4205"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3701,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68\/revisions\/3701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/cogblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}