In a series of papers by our group, we have attempted to characterize the pattern of acute subjective and objective response to an oral alcohol challenge (vs. placebo) in heavy social drinkers (HD) compared with light drinking (LD) controls. After alcohol challenge, HD, relative to LD, exhibited greater stimulant, liking, and wanting responses, and lower sedative and cortisol responses (King et al., 2011a). Importantly HD’s sensitivity to the stimulating and rewarding (i.e., liking and wanting) effects of alcohol predicted future alcohol problems, both at two years (King et al., 2011a) and six years after the initial alcohol challenge (King et al., in press) . Further, relative to LD, HD showed lower perception of impairment despite largely similar decrements in smooth pursuit and saccadic eye movements (Roche and King, 2010) and psychomotor performance (Brumback et al., 2007). While the within-subjects and placebo-controlled design was robust, the measures were psychometrically sound, and the sample size was large with 104 HD, reproducing these findings in an independent sample would ensure the results are generalizable and not the product of an “over fit” to one specific sample.
