Binge drinking (defined as consuming five or more drinks for males, and four or more for females,
in the span of two hours) can harm mental processes short term ( Photo Provided )
A new study conducted on 95 first-year university students found binge drinkers expend more attentional effort to complete a given task and also have a deficiency in differentiating between relevant and irrelevant information.
The study, which was conducted in Spain, looked at 48 male and 47 female students, ranging from 18 to 20 years of age.
Forty-two of the students were categorized as binge drinkers – males who drink five or more standard alcoholic drinks and females who drink four or more within a two-hour interval. The remaining 53 were categorized as “control” students – those with drinking habits below the binge drinking level.
According to the researcher’s estimate, only 12 per cent of Spanish university students are binge drinkers, compared to 40 per cent in the United States.
In a statement, study author Alberto Crego said, “We found that healthy young university students . . . who engaged in binge drinking showed anomalies during the execution of a task involving visual working memory, despite correct execution of the task, in comparison with young non binge drinkers. They required greater attentional processing during the task in order to carry it out correctly.”
Crego is a doctoral student at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Florence Kellner, senior research and policy analyst at the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, warned the study’s findings indicate areas of research that should be pursued, but that it should still be considered as preliminary.
“What we do know for sure is that heavy drinking and frequent heavy drinking is associated with an array of harms for students – e.g., having sex they did not intend to have, having arguments, physical fights and a variety of accidents. Sometimes, there is alcohol poisoning,” she said.
Kellner also said heavy drinking is considered one of the many factors contributing to an alcohol addiction, but binge drinking is not, nor is it definitely not an alcohol addiction.
“It is a behaviour that often increases the risk of harm, especially among young people,” she said.
The results of the study will be published in the November issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.