When exposure to alcohol is limited and prevalence rates for drinking are similar across gender, certain strategies (i.e., challenging positive alcohol expectancies, increasing parental monitoring, and teaching healthy coping responses) are equally useful for boys and girls to problematic drinking. As boys and girls move from experimentation into more regular drinking, intervention approaches need to incorporate risk factors that differentially contribute to development of AUDs for male and female youth. Since boys may be facing fewer physical consequences due to drinking (e.g., vomiting, hangover), experience tolerance more quickly (Schuckit, 2005a,b), and demonstrate delayed executive function and emotional regulation compared to female adolescents (Geidd, 2008), positive expectancies are being reinforced while simultaneously negating the negative effects of drinking. Although motivational interviewing (MI; Miller & Rollnick, 1991) is generally utilized with populations already diagnosed with an AUD, the basic tenets of this approach (e.g., pros and cons of drinking, normative feedback) can also be used with male youth at risk for problematic drinking (Brown, Anderson, Schulte, Sintov, & Frissell, 2005). Boys may benefit more from learning basic decision-making strategies since their executive
