These findings suggest that impulsive sensation seeking and a parental history of alcohol problems operate largely independently with respect to frequency of current alcohol use, current binge alcohol use, and concomitant alcohol-tobacco use. While both impulsive sensation seeking and parental history of alcohol problems were associated with the alcohol use variables and current alcohol-tobacco use, impulsive sensation seeking did not appear to mediate the relationship between parental history and current use. Overall, our results suggest that impulsivity and sensation seeking are not directly related to the psychosocial traits that transmit the risk for greater alcohol use and concomitant alcohol-tobacco use inherent in parental history of alcohol problems.
