Positive results regarding Hypothesis 2 raise the possibility that the difference between SRE-5 and SRE-T might be evaluated as a potentially more standardized way to retrospectively and relatively inexpensively evaluate acquired tolerance. Major diagnostic manuals include tolerance as an important criterion for AUDs (e.g., American Psychiatric Association,1994; World Health Organization 1992). Those diagnostic systems currently often depend on unstructured, retrospective, subjective evaluations of whether tolerance occurred, and, to date, there is no gold standard of how to retrospectively evaluate the change in intensity of response to alcohol over time. Rather than asking a person if they ever required more drinks to get the effect previously experienced with fewer drinks, the SRE potentially quantitatively assesses tolerance by recording a person’s perception of actual quantities required for specific effects at different periods in their lives.
