This review aimed first to estimate the overall difference in subjective response to orally administered alcohol challenge between those at risk and those not at risk. Although subjective response has also been studied using retrospective surveys (e.g., Schuckit et al., 1997) and intravenous alcohol administrations (e.g., Ray et al., 2006), we limited our investigation to the oral challenge paradigm, which has been studied more and—relative to intravenous paradigms—more closely approximates real-world alcohol consumption. Because studies of subjective alcohol response have increasingly compared participants as a function of typical alcohol consumption rather than FH, we included studies from both methodologies but analyzed each separately. Second, given prior results suggesting that subjective response risk—particularly that conferred by FH—may be limited to men, we tested whether subjective response differences were moderated by gender. Finally, and most importantly, we quantitatively summarized the evidence from critical tests of the LLRM and DM. Predictions from the two models differ regarding the effect of risk status on subjective response on the ascending limb of the BAC curve and on measures of subjective stimulation. Estimates of the magnitude and direction of the risk-status effect in these cases provided the strongest evaluations of the two models.
