MEMORY ENHANCEMENT AFTER DRINKING ETHANOL - CONSOLIDATION, INTERFERENCE, OR RESPONSE BIAS

One explanation for memory facilitation is that alcohol has a short-term neurochemical stimulating effect on consolidating neural networks when material is learned before drinking. Contrary to the consolidation hypothesis, when the consolidation interval was manipulated the results showed that the effects of alcohol were not time dependent. Compared to placebo subjects, alcohol significantly facilitated the recall of 25 words whether administered immediately or 40 min after learning. In addition, alcohol significantly increased the memory of words associated with pictures when incidentally learned before drinking and significantly decreased incidental learning after drinking. Another explanation for memory facilitation is that alcohol's depressive physiological effect impairs the acquisition of new information, like sleeping after learning, and enhances memory by reducing subsequent interference. Consistent with the retroactive interference hypothesis, the effects of alcohol reduced interpolated interference, were greater on recall than recognition, and were immune to time delays. Contemporary theories view memory enhancement attributed to alcohol as indirectly influencing response biases and contextual cues associated with retrieval from episodic memory.