An additional limitation is that alcohol response was measured only with self-report; objective measures used in some previous research (e.g., body sway, cortisol, heart rate) were not included here. However, given that the SRE was validated using self-report responses to the Subjective High Assessment Scale (SHAS; Judd et al., 1977), it is unlikely that this limitation poses a serious threat to the validity of the findings. Future research will benefit from the use of various objective measures and by querying stimulant and sedative effects that are both positive and negative (Morean et al., 2013). Also, it should be stressed that effects of initial sensitivity and effects associated with changes in sensitivity that can occur with drinking experience (i.e., tolerance) cannot be disentangled with the current data. Finally, characteristics of the current sample differed somewhat from samples used to initially validate the SRE, in that we did not conduct diagnostic interviews to exclude individuals meeting criteria for AUD, and we did exclude very light drinkers and nondrinkers.
