Effects of alcohol on rotary pursuit performance: A gender comparison

For 6 days, 10 male and 10 female social drinkers performed a rotary pursuit task six times across each day under both placebo and alcohol-intoxicated conditions. Following a training period, 0.35g/kg of alcohol or placebo beverages were administered 45 min before the second, third, and fourth sessions each day. In general, alcohol impaired the rotary pursuit performance of women more than that of men despite similar peak BAC levels. Results suggest no evidence of acute tolerance, evidenced by similar performance on the ascending and descending limbs of the BAC curve. However, results suggest that across the two alcohol administration days, men tended to develop some tolerance to the deleterious effect of alcohol on performance, whereas women became more sensitive to the effect of alcohol on performance. These results indicate that there may be gender differences in the effects of repeated alcohol administration on motor performance.